Abyss
by haloford
Summary: After being implanted with a Tok'ra symbiote, Colonel Jack O'Neill finds himself a captive of the longtime enemy the Goa'uld Ba'al. Brought to the base by memories brought on by his blending, Jack finds comfort in a delusion of his lost friend Dr. Daniel Jackson. Or is he real? This is a novelization of the season 6 episode 'ABYSS.' (WARNING: This story contains graphic violence.)
1. Chapter 1

PROLOGUE

Just the slightest, hesitant nod of his head that he hardly remembered giving changed the course of Colonel Jack O'Neill's fate forever and left him in darkness, awash with pain and numbness, cold and sweat, with a voice in his head not his own.

"Sir," a distant voice pleaded, repeating in his mind in an echo. "Please."

It was that quiet plea that made him decide, the way the voice caught on the words and reminded him of his duty to the Greater Good. After all, he had willingly put missions ahead of his own life many times. This was no different. For the safety of the team, of the world, he would put his own wishes on the back burner once again and sacrifice his life. Sometimes he really hated the Greater Good. But still, he nodded.

Even that memory seemed far away. If he reached his fingertips toward it, it would dissipate and fade like an early morning fog.

He didn't clearly remember the procedure. It was almost like a dream, that moment of a rough scrape against the back of his throat and the taste of coppery blood mingled with something almost musky and it was over. Any discomfort he felt was suddenly gone, as if his mind was turned off and separated from his body. He didn't remember actually falling asleep, but he realized he was waking up and the echoes began to fade.

It wasn't that he heard the presence there, but somehow felt it. His mind rebelled and struggled with the invasion. He heard voices but couldn't tell if they were outside of his mind or within, friend or foe. He saw crystal clear memories not his own. Faces. Places. Events. Feelings. He felt things through hands not his. The invader in his mind went transparent and slick, ghosting through thick lead doors that should have been impenetrable.

No, not that one, his mind screamed silently, but it was too late. The door to a child's room had been opened and he felt himself swept along into the emptiness of it.


	2. Chapter 2

A horn blasted through the air, closer than it had been before. A chill gripped his heart and he felt himself push on faster and harder, pumping his legs with as much speed as he could muster. He was held back by the woman who grasped his hand tightly, struggling to keep up with his breakneck pace. _Hurry,_ he silently urged her. _Faster or they will catch us._

As if reading his mind, she blurted out, "It's too far!"

He could see the glow of the fires surrounding their destination ahead of them through the branches of the forest where they fled. Suddenly his hand felt a tug and emptiness. It took him three steps before he realized that she had tripped and was now sprawled on the floor.

"I can't," she said breathlessly as he crouched down and grasped onto her shoulder.

"Hide here until the Chappa'i is activated." His voice echoed in his throat and he couldn't remember forming the words that came out. "Go."

He watched as she stumbled to her feet and pushed off in a sidelong direction to find cover, leaving him alone on the path. He turned and began fleeing once again toward the large stone circle covered in runes.

His feet splashed through puddles and branches whipped at his face and arms, but he paid no heed. His eyes remained focused on the dialing device for the Gate and his hands began to slap the sequence to establish the wormhole.

A blast of energy screamed through the darkness, meshing with the sound of the quiet scream through his mouth as he fell to the ground immobile.

His fingertips twitched as he tried to grab onto the mud below him and drag himself away, but he felt himself fade. A sudden burst of energy seeped through him and a cold emptiness fell over him. Pain erupted through his throat and something squirmed into his mouth before falling out onto the ground. He barely realized that it was the symbiote he had carried inside, having sacrificed the last of its strength and life force to ensure its host's survival. He continued on, barely realizing that the creature went limp and pale in the mud where it landed.

Grit and grime dug underneath his fingernails as he clawed toward the edge of the clearing to find the woman. So focused was he on that action alone, on not squandering the symbiote's sacrifice that he didn't even realize his pursuers had caught up to him until the boot of one crushed his hand.

"Shek'mal, Tok'ra," the Jaffa spat out as his boot ground down onto the hand's delicate bones. "Kree!" he bellowed, ordering his team gathered behind him. "Jaffa, shal kek!"

Two of the other Jaffa stepped forward and bent down, flipping the limp, exhausted, muddy man over. When he summoned the last of his strength to open his eyes, Jack O'Neill was staring at the sky, watching stars that didn't fit and he no longer had the inner fountain of knowledge to pull from. When he closed his eyes again, darkness overtook him before he was even aware that they pulled him up enough to drag him back to the fortress.

When he finally awoke, he was surrounded by a bright light. Even though it was blindingly bright, there was a thin quality to it, as if it lacked a heft it had previously held. A soft warmth washed over him but as he blinked his eyes into focus again, the sensation waned and he felt bereft. It was like being able to finally sleep in on a beautiful summer morning only to be awakened by someone calling you into work.

"The host lives, my lord," came a voice, muffled and distant. His vision swam for a moment and then focused into extreme clarity, sharper than his aging eyes had been capable of previously.

His brain clicked into sharp focus as well and though he couldn't see the features of the man looming over him, he knew exactly that he had been shoved into a Goa'uld sarcophagus and its owner was staring down at him.

_Crap._


	3. Chapter 3

Deep within Cheyenne Mountain underneath Colorado Springs, a klaxon echoed through a top secret base. Major General George Hammond of the United States Air Force quickened his pace and padded down the stairs into the Operations Room of Stargate Command. He spared a glance at the Stargate itself that loomed through the windows.

"It's the Tok'ra," Sergeant Walter Harrington stated, even though the incoming transmission on the corner of the screen identified it as such. With the standing order to open the iris covering the Stargate as soon as the Tok'ra responded to the several messages sent their way, General Hammond watched and waited for someone to come through. "It's about damn time," he muttered as Thoran, dark-skinned, tall and stately, emerged from the watery surface of the Stargate's wormhole before it cut out behind him.

The Tok'ra was dressed in the typical outlandish way they did but looked otherwise human. Unless his eyes glowed or his symbiote spoke through the host giving his voice a mechanical sort of echo, it was impossible to tell he was anything but just another man.

"Stand down!" General Hammond called to the security personnel lining the Gate room as he made his way toward the ramp to meet the Tok'ra representative as he descended the ramp.

The Tok'ra's voice echoed to show that the symbiote spoke instead of the host. "General Hammond," he greeted curtly.

"Councilor Thoran, I'm afraid my patience on this matter has just about run out," he said, trying to level his voice so he was not snapping. There was a reason that he had often let diplomatic relations fall to the departed Dr. Daniel Jackson or Major Paul Davis. He found himself wishing the one wasn't dead and the other wasn't in Washington dealing with some budget crisis. "You've been promising the safe return of Colonel O'Neill for days. Where is he?"

Thoran raised his head slightly and took in a breath. "I am afraid I am the bearer of bad news," he stated, seemingly untouched by the statement.

Hammond's jaw clenched tightly in response and turned to head to the briefing room.

When he led the Tok'ra Councilor through the Operations Room, he growled a command to summon the remaining members of SG-1 to the Briefing Room.

Several minutes later, the remaining members of the SGC's premiere team settled in to listen to the flimsy excuse the Councilor had to offer.

Major Samantha Carter frowned deeply as she listened. "And he just walked out of your base?" she questioned, glancing over her shoulder at Thoran who stood at the window overlooking the Stargate. "Nobody noticed he was gone until it was too late," she repeated, words toned with disbelief.

Thoran turned away from the view and moved back toward the table. "With the attack on Revanna, our numbers have been severely diminished. We had no reason to expect this. I see no reason to assign blame."

Jonas Quinn looked up from where he had been taking notes. "Colonel O'Neill did put his life in your hands," he mentioned, waving a hand as if commanding Thoran to continue with the excuses.

Thoran stood next to the chair and narrowed his eyes slightly. "Receiving a symbiote was his only hope for survival," he pointed out flatly.

Sam started to open her mouth to respond but instead sucked in her cheeks and fought back the urge.

"He could have refused," Teal'c stated in reminder.

Dr. Janet Fraiser smiled tightly. "In which case you would have never been able to retrieve the knowledge in Kanan's mind."

"A more than fair exchange."

General Hammond felt his hands twitch as if they wanted to tighten into fists and let out a breath to relax. He would never understand the Tok'ra. To them, a host was simply a means to an end, second after the symbiote. Replaceable. Sure, they attempted to live harmoniously with each other and they preached about mutual respect, but they still saw the humans, the Tau'ri, as secondary afterthoughts. "Colonel O'Neill would not agree to a blending with a symbiote unless there was more at stake than his life," he pointed out.

"Perhaps," Thoran mentioned in an arrogant hesitation as if the words shouldn't have to be said, "it was that repugnance of blending with another mind that caused O'Neill to behave so irrationally."

Janet Fraiser perked up. "General, I can't speculate on Colonel O'Neill's state of mind, but while a mature symbiote can take control of the host body whenever it wants to," she said, eyes veering from Hammond toward Thoran as her voice turned sharper and colder, each word shorter, "it doesn't work both ways."

"I can vouch for that, sir." Usually, Sam didn't like discussing the time she had played unwitting host to a Tok'ra symbiote, but desperate times called for desperate measures. "There's no way Colonel O'Neill could have walked out on his own."

It was simple deduction that led Teal'c to determine, "Then he was forced to do so, against his will, by the symbiote."

For a moment the room was quiet, tensed on the point of a needle that could send relations between the two sides distantly apart in a moment. "You accuse an honored Tok'ra of behaving as a Goa'uld."

"Councilor—" Hammond started, only to be cut off by a glower and angry words.

"Kanan has fought the Goa'uld longer than any of you have lived. Yet you spit the word symbiote as thought you spoke of vermin." As Thoran snapped the words out, Sam looked up at him. She was torn between hearing him out and interrupting. On one hand, she had as much experience in being a host as any other Tok'ra despite the short span of her experience, but she was also a member of Stargate Command and the Tau'ri. "Whatever you may think of our form, Kanan was as a brother to me." He paused and sucked in a breath, feeling a wash of calm spread over him as his host made his presence known. _Calm_, he felt rather than heard and let the cold grip of anger around his heart loosen a little. He steeled himself, straightened up and continued. "The Tok'ra council accepts that Kanan may be lost to us."

"That's the big difference between us, Councilor," General Hammond said as he looked up at the ambassador. "We don't leave our people behind."

Sam let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and let a slight smile show on her lips. There were many words used to describe her commanding officer, Colonel Jack O'Neill, but a coward was not one of them. She'd witnessed time and again how he would latch onto his stubborn streak and defy even the President's orders if it meant going after someone on his team, or even someone he just felt that he owed it to. She felt that same sense of pride while watching General Hammond speak to the Tok'ra.

Thoran's cheeks twitched slightly in response and he remained silent as he took in the meaning of those words. _Stubborn fools_, he thought to himself. He would never understand them.


	4. Chapter 4

The Goa'uld were universally known for their bad taste. The style of their clothes was uselessly elaborate. The decor of their lairs was beyond tasteless. Despite his short-lived time as a Tok'ra host, this thought was was no different in Jack's mind as he was yanked through the stronghold by two Jaffa. Finally they emerged into a room and he was led up three steps to a platform.

Before he even came to a pause, he felt the universe tilt slightly and the room fell out from his feet. He was sucked in, flying forward until he landed face-first onto a spider-web looking panel. He twitched against it, sensing slightly that the two Jaffa moved away toward the door, flanking it. Tapping footsteps of boots, fancier than the useful form worn by the Jaffa, drew closer.

Male, medium to large build, he sensed by sound alone, using senses long honed in his years of black ops and field work. Arrogant, to judge by the pace and step. Focused. Probably the Goa'uld. Before he could determine anything else, the footfalls went silent and he felt himself being turned so his back was against the webbing and he was face to face with his captor. The motion was so harsh that it blew the air from his lungs and it was only his training kicking in that had him exhaling as he did so to fight the feeling of air being pushed from his lungs.

The Jaffa left.

Jack wasn't sure that was a good sign.

"Who are you?" the Goa'uld asked, the reverb of the voice proving Jack's initial thought was correct.

"You go first," Jack retorted in a gravelly voice as he watched the garishly dressed Goa'uld pick up a long knife and moved to sit on the throne-like chair on the platform. Even that motion was flamboyant and arrogant.

The Goa'uld remain settled in his seat. "You claim you do not know me?" he asked, a hint of amusement undertoning his words.

"Well, take no offense there, Skippy, I'm sure you're a real hot, important Goa'uld." Jack found he was able to slightly move his hands, attempting to talk with them as he figured out where the invisible bonds were that kept him attached to the webbing. "I've just always been kind of out of the loop with the… snake thing."

"I am Ba'al."

The invisible field of gravity, and Jack had no doubt that's what it was as it pulled against him, ended at his wrists. He could slightly move his head, but even that was difficult. The rest of him? Forget about it. He was stuck and without some sort of bindings to undo, he saw no way to get out of this. At least for now. So he kept the Goa'uld talking. "That's it? Just… ball? As in Bocce?"

Ba'al rose, his dark eyes narrowing slightly. Despite the symbiote having full control over his host, he did not flare his eyes. Jack suddenly had the impression that his usual snake-baiting wouldn't work on this one. He was, dare he say it, smarter than the average snake.

He watched as Ba'al smoothly rose and strolled toward the edge of the platform. Unlike most of the snakes Jack had seen, there was something different about this one. He oozed a sort of regal bearing. Even his clothing was more subdued than the System Lords they had faced before. In a way, this made him seem all the more menacing as an opponent. Then again, Jack figured he could chalk the feeling up to being fairly immobile aside from his head and his arms from the elbow down. It was likely a deliberate thing to leave that portion of his arms and his head free. He couldn't move in a way that would do him any good and just made him realize how tightly the rest of him was held in the force field's grasp. Even his lungs had such a gravitational pull on them that he could hardly fill them fully. Any more pressure and they would probably collapse.

Ba'al lifted his hand slowly and the end of the knife twitched in reaction to the outskirts of the gravity field where Jack was stuck. "Do you not know the pain you will suffer for this impudence?" he asked in a low, deep voice echoed in the way of the Goa'uld.

For years Jack and Daniel had engaged in the pastime of snake-baiting. It was hard to push back the need to say something flippant in response and before he realized it came out, Jack heard the words slip from his mouth. "I don't know the meaning of the word," he said in a near snarl. The snake, Ba'al , he corrected in his mind, lifted the hand holding the knife.

The sharp edge glinted off the offset lighting and Jack felt a rush of ice through his veins as he realized that unlike the other Goa'uld, this one, this Ba'al , wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He did his own dirty work. And right now, that dirty work involved a sharp knife pointing right at Jack's chest.

"Seriously. Impudence. What does that mean?" Jack added flippantly, his mannerisms shifting to combat the underlying thrill of fear he couldn't help but feel.

With the slightest of motions, Ba'al released his grasp on the knife. Caught in the gravity field, it flew straight across the room and lodged itself painfully and deep into Jack's left shoulder. Pain bloomed from front to back and leached out into the rest of the area of his body. He unsuccessfully pulled against the invisible binding of the gravity field but still couldn't move even with the quick surge of adrenaline brought on by being stabbed. The knife remain painfully lodged into the muscle and each struggle to free himself caused more of the muscle to shred against its razor-sharp edge.

Ba'al slowly turned and picked up a twin to the knife. Jack didn't even need to see the edge of it to know it would be just as sharp. If this one went to the left and down even a little, it would possibly be the beginning of a long and painful ending for him.

The last hints of the warmth he had felt in the box earlier fled from him.

"I shall begin again." Ba'al looked down at the knife in his hand and smiled as if pleased by how sharp his First Prime had gotten the blade. "Who are you?"

Jack sucked in a quick breath against the pain and redness that blurred his vision. Being used to being in pain more often than not didn't make the pain itself hurt any less and still required an adjustment period as he felt it out and kept the knife from doing more damage to his shoulder meat. "Colonel Jack O'Neill. US Air Force. Two Ls in that," he hissed out, moving his right arm from the elbow down to lift two fingers. It was a mistake. The motion sent a fresh arc of pain through him with the effort.

"That may be who you once were, Tok'ra-" Ba'al started, only to be cut off by Jack, fueled by a flare of anger that stemmed from his gut. "I may be a lot of things, but I'm no Tok'ra," Jack spit out.

Ba'al chuckled in amusement at his prisoner. He remembered little of the Tau'ri physiology, but he remembered enough to tell this one was lean and scarred in the way only those who lived hard, violent lives looked. His silvering hair showed his true age, as did the crinkles at the edges of his eyes and mouth. This one was long past his prime and it was nearly laughable how he fought for the perhaps two decades of life he had left in that body. Humans were always a frail, transient thing, gone so fast.

"It is true," he admitted. "We were only able to capture the host. Your symbiote fled the body out of cowardice." Jack focused his gaze on Ba'al, remembering all too clearly that the symbiote, that Kanan , was dying and knew Jack's best bet was to go alone. Sensing that jab of grief despite his best effort to force it down and deny it even to himself, he let his head lull to the side to keep from making eye contact until he could force back the glint in his eyes.

Ba'al continued, amusement showing in his grin. "But it is also true that the Tok'ra share body and mind equally. You will know all that it knew."

Jack scoffed a bit. "I think you'll find that I know… less than you… think I know," Jack stammered, the halfhearted attempt at being pithy failing as all he could think about was avoiding more pain now that he'd managed to fight back the bulk of the agony in his shoulder.

Ba'al lifted the knife again. It dangled from his fingertips as he leaned a tiny bit forward. Jack could tell when the gravity field grabbed it as it shot up straight and pointed directly at him. If he wasn't mistaken, this time it was pointed at his heart.

"Why have you come to this outpost?"

Jack's mind whirled. He had to think fast and talk faster. "See that's a perfect example right there. I haven't a clue!"

Before the words died across his lips, Jack felt his entire body try to arch against the new pain that jolted through him. Thankfully the knife was either aimed somewhere else, or the gravity field kept its aim from being true. Instead of lodging into his heart, it speared through his right shoulder, almost mirroring the left side.

He felt the gravity field keep the blood from flowing freely down the front of him, but even without the sensation of bleeding out, he knew he eventually would. Death by a thousand paper cuts is not the way he'd expected to leave the world. At least the blades had missed vital organs and he could breathe easily despite the pain, so his lungs were not, yet at least, punctured.

As Jack watched Ba'al pick up a third knife, he felt a ball of ice form in the depths of his stomach. The SGC didn't know where he was. The Tok'ra didn't know where he was. Even his own team thought he was off with the Tok'ra and wouldn't know he was missing let alone that he might need a rescue. If he was going to get out of this one, he'd have to rescue himself. And while it wasn't the first time he had been in this situation, at least previously he had been on the correct planet. Escape was looking mighty difficult if at all possible.

"You have been here before." Ba'al's voice had a strange almost soothing tone to it. Jack had a fleeting sensation that he should read those audiobooks or working in news radio. If he wasn't trying to keep from hissing in pain with the movement of each breath, he'd probably laugh at the thought of a Goa'uld having a mundane job. Even the one left to adapt to Earth over the centuries couldn't resist becoming a cult leader.

Despite his best attempt, Jack's voice was pinched as he flippant replied, "First time."

Ba'al turned, taking up his earlier position at the edge of the gravity field, knife in hand. "You know your way to and from our most secret outpost. Clearly you have been here."

"What?" His most secret outpost? Jack had no idea where he was, let alone what the place was supposed to be.

"Did you really hope to escape my personal guard?"

"What?" Jack repeated breathlessly, eyes latched onto the motion of the knife in the snake's hands.

Bad idea. The way he tried to emphasize the word to show he had no idea what the man was talking about meant Jack moved a little too much against the edges of the knives stuck through him. Pain rushed out of his shoulders and into his brain, making his head swim. Passing out was looking like a good idea, even if it left him helpless in the hands of his enemy.

"Alright, look!" he protested. "This is the last thing I remember. I swear to god. I was sick." The feeling of his body shutting down around him came back in a sharp memory. At least that was a far less painful death than this was proving to be. Out of the frying pan, into the Goa'uld torture chamber. "I agreed to let the Tok'ra put a snake in my head or I would have died. Right now, I'm kinda wishing I had."

Ba'al chuckled softly at how easily he broke his new toy. A smile slid across his lips as he looked down at the blade in his hand. "A wish easily granted."

He slid a finger down the edge of the knife near the point. It easily cut through the fragile layers of his skin but before it even drew blood, the symbiote healing powers kicked in. It was a favorite sensation, the pinch of pain followed by the warm flood of healing. He loved this body. Of all the hosts he had taken over the millennia, this was possibly his favorite. It didn't help that he found the form pleasing to look at. For a human, anyway.

"What is your mission here?" he asked as he looked up at his restrained guest.

Jack shook his head a little. It was getting harder to move. Possibly he was just growing weaker. "No mission." He didn't like the way his voice sounded to himself. It lacked the undertone of certainty and nonchalance that he had perfected over the years.

"Why have you returned?"

"I've never been here," Jack protested weakly, trying to summon as much strength as he could even though majority of it was going toward the difficulty he had in staying awake and alert.

Ba'al continued, his voice even and dripping with arrogance. If he was growing impatient, Jack couldn't see it. Then again, he wasn't the most observant at this moment and it always was harder to read a Goa'uld than a human. "What did you want with the female?" Ba'al asked, glancing up from the knife he toyed with.

"What female?" It wasn't Jack's first time being tortured, not that he wanted to admit to it since that meant he'd been caught, but there was something different about this time. The fact that he knew he had known these answers just a short while ago but no longer did made him feel even worse about the whole situation. Perhaps if he was in a comfortable dark room where he felt safe he could delve into the depths of his brain and kick at things until the answers tumbled out so he could figure out how he got into this situation and what the best way out would be, but he wasn't in a comfortable dark room. The answers eluded him.

"Death will only offer a temporary escape," Ba'al pointed out. "I can revive you again and again. A thousand times if need be." And beat Daniel's record? Jack mused. I think not. "Only once you have told me everything I ask will you be allowed to die. One. Last. Time."

Jack wanted to groan at the theatrics and dramatics of it all but couldn't even manage a sigh.

Ba'al lifted the third knife and Jack watched it lock into position as it hit the gravity field.

A lurch of hopelessness unfurled in him, knowing he couldn't do a damn thing about the fact that this knife was about to be launched right into another part of his body.

The last thing he saw was Ba'al's fingers loosen their grip to allow the knife to come hurtling toward him.


	5. Chapter 5

Teal'c had, over the many years of his lengthy life, learned the value of patience. He could stoically wait on or for just about anything. However, the urge to place his hands around the neck of the Tok'ra and squeeze was becoming too bright an idea to ignore. As if in agreement, the symbiote in his abdomen twitched as if angry, almost like it picked up on his irritation. He sat on the edge of the briefing table and took shallow breaths in an attempt to calm the churning in his gut.

Sam walked closer across the briefing room floor, eyes fixed on the starmap she approached. Even from this distance Teal'c could tell her mind was working quickly.

"Where was his last mission?" she asked as she looked at the map.

Thoran moved closer to stand near her and she tore her eyes away to look at him.

"As an operative aboard a mothership in Zipacna's fleet. He managed to escape during a battle with Lord Yu's forces, but just barely," he informed her.

Jonas, taking notes, moved toward the table. "Did he have a motive to return to that vessel?" he asked as he jotted down his notations. He was determined that his first rescue mission of a teammate would go well and not be screwed up because of something he overlooked. Sam and Teal'c would never overlook any detail. The Colonel would never overlook any detail. Daniel Jackson wouldn't have overlooked any detail. Not that he would ever dare compare himself to the dearly departed Doctor Jackson whose shoes he was trying so desperately to not fill but kept finding him wearing thanks to the rest of the SGC.

Thoran looked over toward him. "Such as?" he asked, confused.

"Unfinished business?" Jonas supplied, looking up from his notations. "A task left undone?" He had assumed that unfinished business was a universal understanding. The Tau'ri seemed to have a grasp of it, at least.

Teal'c pushed off his spot on the table to move closer to the map as if it held some sort of secret code that would solve the mystery of O'Neill's whereabouts.

"His report stated that the mission objectives were complete," Thoran said, almost confused at there being anything in consideration outside the mission parameters. "We are willing to attempt contact with our operatives on these words here," he said as he reached to a point on the map before tapping two others, "here, and here."

"His previous missions." Teal'c knew from the report they had badgered the Tok'ra High Council for that these had been the locations of his missions, though the report unsurprisingly left out the nature of them.

Thoran gave a slight nod. "If Kanan returned to these worlds, for whatever reason, our operatives may have learned of it."

Jonas, hurriedly scribbled the locations into the margin of his book. "Well when will we hear news?"

"It may take many months," Thoran responded.

Sam frowned and started to open her mouth, but Teal'c beat her to it. "You spoke of Kanan's mission reports."

"What of it?"

"Well, we'd like to see them," Sam said before Teal'c had the chance. "If Jonas' instinct is correct and Kanan had unfinished business, there may be clues."

Thoran lifted himself slightly, though his posture was already good. "Their contents are not relevant," he stated arrogantly.

Jonas closed his book, using a finger shoved in between the pages to hold his spot. "Well, Colonel O'Neill's life is at stake. I believe that is relevant."

Thoran looked at him, then back to Sam. Surely as a former Tok'ra, as short a tenure as it was, she would understand.

"What you ask is not possible."

Sam didn't understand. "Really?" she asked in quiet disbelief. Some allies they were turning out to be.


	6. Chapter 6

There it was again.

The warmth and the light that wrapped him in a soft loving embrace, easing all his pains and his fears. As long as he was surrounded by it, everything was good. He didn't even care if he made it home or not as long as the light would stay.

Jack slowly opened his eyes as he heard the stone-on-stone grind of the sarcophagus doors sliding open. The light dimmed to just illumination.

The warm glow that enveloped him dissipated and he realized where he was.

Not dead. Very much not dead.

He very clearly remembered feeling the life drain out of his body.

Somehow, though, that didn't seem important. Nothing seemed important except the euphoria of the healing light.

He looked around slightly as if fully realizing where he was.

_Oh shit_.

No wonder Daniel got hooked on the thing. It was a rush like he had never felt before and he hated that he wanted to soak up every last bit of it before the guards he heard approaching yanked him out of it and back into hell.

Tightly grabbing onto his arms, the two Jaffa yanked him forcefully from the confines of the sarcophagus and dragged him to his feet. Despite the motion, his knees didn't whine and complain. Oh, that sarcophagus was good. He was better than new. Which sucked when he thought about it because it meant he was healthy and fine and would withstand more torture before dying and repeating the whole thing over again.

He found his feet under him so he could walk instead of being dragged. The two Jaffa kept their meaty hands tight on his arms and he had to walk faster than he normally would to keep up. They turned a few corners, each hallway looking the same in garish decor, and finally came to an opening into a long narrow octagonal shaped room with no door.

The Jaffa pushed him inside the room and one slid his hand over a button on the wall.

A whirring sound built and Jack felt himself pulled down to the floor and then against the far wall.

Dammit, another gravity field, he thought as he steadied himself on his feet. The walls, ceiling and floor of the room that he'd been shoved into became the walls of his cell and the opening he entered was now overhead. The recessed lighting was too far and too shallow to use their alcoves to try and climb out, and the walls were otherwise smoothly carved of what seemed to be pure rock. Two narrow benches that sat on opposite sides were the only points of comfort to be found.

He felt the section with the carving and his fingers slid against the smoothness of the stone. The lights were unbreakable and the area around them angled outward. Even if he could reach from one to the other, there was nowhere to gain purchase in order to climb.

Could be worse, though. At least he was dressed. Sure it was in Tok'ra styled garb that was full of holes, but it was clothing at least. Temperature was fine. He wasn't thirsty or hungry, probably thanks to the aftermath of the sarcophagus bringing him back from the brink of death. Or was it actual death? He wasn't sure. There was just a dark nothingness until he opened his eyes after being healed. This was what, the second time he died and was brought back? With the Nox he felt fine. Normal. The lingering buzz that raced through him now was so much better.

Nope. Nope, not going there. He wasn't going to think about it. If it had this sort of potency after one time when it was needed, using it while otherwise healthy had to be a rush like no other. Now he at least understood the foolish bravery that Daniel had shown after Ra had brought him back. Now he understood the feeling of addiction that Daniel had shown after Shyla had him using her father's sarcophagus.

No, he wasn't going to think about that. Or the fact that he was probably dead. He was going to focus on getting out.

Get out. Find a way off this planet or whatever it was. Contact the SGC. Go home.

Jack made the checklist in his mind and started taking inventory of what he had. Which wasn't much but the torn clothing he wore and a few bits of knowledge and a few gaping holes where he didn't have knowledge he was supposed to.

Okay, maybe he'd at least have a chance to take a page from Teal'c's book and mediate or something to try and find the answers his symbiote had and maybe left in his brain.

No, not his symbiote. The symbiote. It wasn't a blending. It was medicine. And he no longer had to think about it and the strange sadness of the empty section of his mind that was left by it.

A distant scream, high pitched like that of a female, whispered in an echo through the chamber and Jack looked upward.

A woman dressed in black sat on the wall. Wait, for her it was the floor. Okay, so a woman dressed in black sat on the floor and looked down at him.

Maybe he was already starting to break.

"Is it you?" she asked hopefully and quietly.

Jack just stared. He wasn't sure if something about her was familiar or if he was projecting in hopes of finding a potential ally to exploit.

Not sure what to say, he kept staring at her. His lips parted to say something, but nothing came out.

He closed his eyes and centered himself before looking back up.

She was gone.

Jack felt like he should call after her or something but didn't know how.

"Hi, Jack."

Hi yourself, Daniel- Jack started to think, only to stop craning his neck and turn his attention to one of the benches.

It was Daniel. Hair cropped close, glasses missing, cream colored sweater hanging on him like it actually fit instead of the baggy clothes he'd been used to seeing him wear for so many years. But it was Daniel. Or a ghost.

The Daniel-shaped ghost gave a little wave. Maybe he was still dead and stuck in some sort of limbo.

"Daniel."

"I leave and look at the mess you get yourself into," Daniel said. His voice had a thin echo quality to it, giving the whole thing a more surreal feel than it already had. "It's good to see you."

Jack couldn't tear his eyes away from the vision or whatever it was, even when he sensed a Jaffa walking patrol pass by the ceiling of his cell. "Yeah," he said cautiously as he took the couple of steps to the other bench and sat down, not looking away from Daniel the entire time as if he was afraid if he as much as blinked, Daniel would be gone. "You too. It's a shame you're a delusion."

Daniel looked like Daniel. Sounded like Daniel. Sat like Daniel with his hands clasped in front of him and his shoulders slumped just a little inward. He never did fully break the terrible posture he'd adopted over the years in academia and foster care. Were his eyes always that bright a shade of blue? Maybe it was because he was talking to a ghost and imagined his eyes like that. Maybe it was another sign he was losing his damn mind.

"No, I'm here. I'm really here."

Jack stared at the Daniel-shaped delusion. "Sure you are," he said skeptically as he and 'Daniel' just stared at each other. Both had the look of someone who had much to say but couldn't bring themselves to say it. Jack wasn't sure he wasn't imagining him and Daniel wasn't sure Jack would believe anything he said when he wasn't sure how he even believed it. So they just stared at each other.

Jack sat back against the wall and lifted one leg so he could pull off the shoe from that foot. He tapped it a couple of times in debate before giving it a slight overhand toss toward the other bench.

The shoe went right through a wincing 'Daniel' and hit the wall, bouncing off and coming to a stop on the floor in front of him.

"Here in the sense that my consciousness is here, if not in the full physical flesh and blood sense, which is really… well neither here nor there," Daniel rambled. "The point is, you're not imagining this."

Jack scoffed. "I just tossed my shoe through you."

"Yes," Daniel drawled out. "You did. But that's because I've ascended to another plane of existence."

Even imaginary Daniel had the tone of someone who was explaining something to a child with ADD who was wired on caffeine and sugar.

Jack didn't miss it. He wondered why his imagination would stick Daniel with the tone he hated.

"Ooooh," Jack sing-songed in an obviously fake show of mock understanding.

"Remember Oma Desala?" Daniel continued. "The whole glowing thing? You helped me out? I couldn't have done that without you, remember that?"

Jack winced inside. Leave it to his mind to bring that from the back of his mind where he'd buried it finally, all the way to the forefront with a speed so fast it felt like a slap. He made a sound of acknowledgement, choked back with the flood of fresh grief that came with it.

Daniel gave a slight smile. A sad smile. "I'm," he started, only to pause for a moment. "I'm energy now."

Jack rolled his eyes a little. "How's that working out for you?"

"Good actually. Very…" Daniel trailed off as Jack supplied the final "Good." Daniel nodded a bit. "Very good," he said slowly. "You, however…"

This time when Daniel trailed off, Jack didn't pick up the thread immediately. Instead, he looked down at the floor and where his shoe had landed. "Yeah, well, you know what it's like." He got off the bench and bent down to pick up the shoe. "Coming back from the dead, I mean. Takes a while to get the color back in your cheeks."

"Yeah."

Jack sat back down and looked over at Daniel. There was something about that last word that even his brain couldn't make up. It was a moment of pure sadness. A longing. A joy. A feeling that Jack didn't know the name for. Daniel probably would know it. In ten or more languages, even. But it was that single word that just made something inside him shift from skeptical to embracing.

He pointed his shoe at Daniel. "So, not a delusion?" he asked.

Daniel shook his head. "No."

Jack refused to acknowledge the flare of hope that lit up inside him.

"Okay. Show me your stuff," he said, motioning with the shoe. "Bust me outta here."

Daniel tried not to wince. Jack knew the expression well. The one where Daniel was biting back some sort of shrewish comeback. He hadn't had that look sent his way in a long time. He almost missed it. "I can't," he finally said through slightly clenched teeth.

"Why not?"

Daniel sighed softly and looked around as if seeking out patience. "I'm not allowed to interfere," he finally said.

Jack didn't get it. "You're interfering right now," he pointed out.

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

Daniel gave him that look again. "No, I'm not. I am… consoling a friend."

"What good's the power to make the wind blow or toss lightning around if you can't use it to spring an old friend outta jail?" Jack demanded, feeling that spark of hope inside him start to freeze over again.

Dangerous thing, that hope.

He wasn't sure if the coldness he felt inside was the loss of hope, the last remnants of the sarcophagus buzz wearing off or the grief that apparently summoned Daniel of all people in his time of need.

"I would if I could," Daniel muttered.

Jack didn't get it. He frowned. Wasn't going glowy supposed to give you all those cool powers? "You can't do that stuff?"

"I can. I just…" Daniel's voice became a little wispy. "I can't."

"Well thanks for stopping by, then," Jack said with a slight glower.

"Ba'al is torturing you and I wasn't just gonna sit by!" Daniel protested, leaning forward for emphasis. "Look, all he wants to know is the reason you came to this planet. You really don't know?"

Ah. So it was a planet. At least if the delusion of Daniel was to be trusted. Likely the same one he had been on when he- was it him? He remembered being zatted. Running. The warmth of a hand in his. The feel of the crunch of leaves and ground underfoot, then under his face as he fell toward it. Darkness. Was that even him or a memory left as an echo, something a former host had done? Jack hated not being able to trust his own mind. Give it an inch and it takes a mile and comes back with a Daniel.

"Do you?" he asked. Maybe the vision or whatever this was of Daniel was his mind's way of introducing him to the information he needed to fill in the gaps.

"Well, all I know is that you, or more accurately the symbiote the Tok'ra placed inside of you, congratulations by the way, walked off undetected in the middle of the night and came here."

There it was. The source of all these problems. He was better off dying in Antarctica.

"I can't believe I actually let them put a snake in my head," Jack said with a wince. "My head. I agreed to this." He still couldn't believe it. What was he thinking? Was it a fear of dying? Was it the pleading sound in Carter's voice? Was it that he trusted his team, his family, more than he ever trusted anyone he'd ever served with and he was too tired to make a decision on his own so he let himself be influenced?

No, he thought of it as medicine. An antibiotic. Take it, run the course of it, then stop. He'd get healed and it would get the hell out of his body. Easy peasy. He was never going to actually be a host. He was just going to be a temporary shell for it to survive in and in return it was going to fix the Ancient plague that was killing him because he stupidly let them thaw an Ancient woman who infected them and then cured everyone but him before she died. Had he been one person closer to her, none of this would have happened. He wouldn't have been snaked. He wouldn't have betrayed everything he thought he stood for because of his own fear and weakness. He wouldn't currently be sitting in a sideways cell after being brought back to life after being killed by a guy named after a toy.

The flicker in him was back again, this time flamed by anger.

"It never shared with you why it would walk alone into a heavily fortified Goa'uld outpost?" Daniel asked.

"There was no sharing!" Jack snapped. "I was sick!"

"I know," Daniel said quietly in understanding.

"They did the implantation, which is a word I intend never to use again, and I woke up here," Jack said, motioning around to indicate the facility at large. "That's my week so far."

He took a deep calming breath. "So you really don't know," Daniel said softly as Jack exhaled.

There was… something. Something niggling at the back of his brain. Something about…

Jack scrunched his eyes closed and tried to remember. It was there. He knew it. It was right there and he couldn't grab onto it to save his life.

He was running again. Not him. Wait. It was him. It was Kanan doing the running and he was just using Jack's body. Legs pumping, heart thudding, blood coursing through him. He was alive. He was running and he wasn't winded. Or maybe he was and he didn't notice or care. He was disconnected from his body even though he was in control of it.

Wait, was that right? Did he feel that disconnect or was it Jack, the real Jack, trying to break through the barriers of his mind and take control of his body that felt disconnected? No, he wasn't trying to take control. He was letting it happen.

He was running.

He was running with… her.

His eyes snapped open. Just as quickly as he had put his fingertips gently on the memory, it slid away. "Uh, something to do with one of Ba'al's slaves," he said, grasping for any part of the memory he could. "I got a visual, but I've never met her before."

Daniel blurted out, "Nobody knows you're here."

Jack, stunned, looked up at him. The last specks of the memory faded and a cold reality settled back in.

"Even if they did, they'd never be able to pull off a rescue because this place is a fortress." Leave it to Daniel to state the obvious.

He sat there, eyes unfocused, voice a bit distant. It was exactly how he'd sounded before when he was alive. When he would pick up a thread and follow it through the clues that finally got put in the right order to make sense. "Ba'al is just going to keep on torturing you to death and reviving you in a sarcophagus until he finds out what he wants. Which is impossible because you don't know anything," he continued, the words coming out faster as he realized the full extent of what was happening. "Or until you're not worth reviving any more. But you'll cease to be the Jack O'Neill we know long before that."

There it was again. That ball of ice that Jack felt forming in his stomach. "Well," he said in as flippant a tone as he could manage, "Apparently I've got a big day tomorrow."

Daniel shook his head. "No," he said softly. "I'm not gonna let that happen. I won't let him destroy you."

He knew. Now that he was Ascended, he knew the key role Jack had been playing in the story of the Tau'ri so far. He knew how everything in the past had led to certain events, certain points that had to pass for the race to evolve. He didn't think Jack's part in it was done. It was important to ensure Jack was still around, even if it wasn't in human form.

"You just said you couldn't help," Jack pointed out.

Daniel smiled a little. Suddenly it was clear to him. "No, I can't stop Ba'al from torturing you any more than Oma could heal my radiation sickness. But," he said with that brilliant smile, "I can help you ascend."

Jack hadn't expected that. He was pretty sure already that Daniel was not an illusion, not something his brain conjured up, but now he actually believed it. Daniel wouldn't not help. Daniel, always so carefully bound by the rules that he actually believed in even if he couldn't care less about those he didn't, had found a loophole he could live with. One he could fight to the death for. One he was more than willing to take up with The Others if necessary.

So Jack just stared at Daniel, letting the words soak in. Ascend? He wasn't even sure what that meant. Oh, he knew it involved becoming a glowy energy tentacle creature of some sort, or whatever form they took on that came across to mere mortals as a glowy tentacle creature, but wasn't that just another form of death?

Daniel was dying when he chose. He was in agony that couldn't be fixed. Even the Goa'uld healing device wasn't working, it was only keeping him slightly alive longer to feel nothing but that unbearable pain. Healing him was only making it worse.

He hadn't thought twice. He would have taken any out to not feel that anymore and he knew it. Ascension just seemed a better, less final in some way, choice than death. The mysteries of the universe called out to him and this would allow him to heed that call. And he had. Already he had learned so much. Become so much. It would take a millennium to even understand the extent of what he had left to learn.

How could he even begin to explain it in words? How could he show Jack how it was the only way out? The best way. That's what he had been missing all this time. Someone to share the experience with who would find the same sense of wonder in it. Jack would make a far better Ascended being than he did.

So he looked hopefully at Jack who just stared back at him in disbelief.


	7. Chapter 7

It didn't take long for Thoran to start protesting.

General George Hammond sat in his office, door open, just waiting.

The raised voices downstairs, specifically the most raised one with the flanged twang of a symbiote, came out in a quick burst and then died back down.

That was his cue.

He stood from his comfy fancy chair and strolled slowly to the briefing room that held Thoran and the remaining members of SG-1.

Thoran turned to him and sneered. "Your underlings will not allow me to leave."

The general gave a tight smile. "My officers and enlisted personnel are following my direct orders," he responded as Thoran's eyes narrowed.

"This Jaffa threatened my life."

Thoran motioned toward Teal'c who stood there stoically, massive arms crossed over his chest. "I merely informed you that any further attempt to activate the Stargate would result in physical injury."

"Then," Thoran asked as he looked back to the general, "I am a prisoner?"

Hammond shook his head. "I would prefer that you consider yourself a guest," he drawled out.

Carter chimed in merrily, "And you'll be free to leave as soon as you provide us with the mission reports we've requested, under article nine of our treaty."

Thoran fought back a glare. How dare these Tau'ri make such demands of him? Of the Tok'ra?

"Such a request to the council must be made in person."

Jonas looked from Thoran to the others. "Why's that?" he asked. He hadn't remembered the in person portion in the treaty and he had the document nearly memorized by now. "This control facility is quite capable of relaying a request on multiple frequencies, including those used by the Tok'ra."

Hammond nodded knowingly, fighting back the urge to grin at the young man. He found himself warming to him more and more. "Of course, if you choose not to avail yourself of that capability," he pointed out as he focused on Thoran again, "we would be pleased to provide you with comfortable quarters until you decide to change your mind."

Thoran looked shocked, but hid it well. "You threaten the peaceful continuation of relations between our two peoples, General Hammond."

"If our relations continue in the direction they're going, Councilor, I don't really give a damn."

Hammond looked over at SG-1 who were all smiling sunnily at the Tok'ra. Well, Teal'c wasn't glowering, which was as close to a condescending smile as he'd likely ever get, but the effect was the same. Thoran wilted slightly. "Very well. I will make your request that the reports be sent here immediately."

Of course he would. If General George Hammond had ever been certain about anything in his life, and in his command, he was certain that SG-1 would do whatever necessary to ensure the return of their commanding officer. That was one thing he had no doubt about.

"Thank you," he said to the Councilor before turning on his heel and heading back toward his office, leaving Thoran to glare at the rest of the team.


	8. Chapter 8

Jack was a creature of habit and action. The small cell didn't offer much room for any sort of motion which was about the only action he was likely to find in a cell that had no way out in a fortress that also had no way out, on a planet that probably had close to no way out. He couldn't even pace because that would bring him too close to the entity in the corner that he wanted to pretend wasn't real even though he knew better.

"So," he offered up after a long moment of consideration, "You wanna be my Oma?"

Daniel remained still, hands carefully clasped in his lap, shoulders still turned in a bit. It was painfully close to the Daniel he'd been before Ascending, but was also drastically different in ways Jack couldn't understand let alone put words to. He felt a pang of regret and loneliness.

The only reason that Daniel was making the offer is because Jack couldn't do it himself and wasn't the type of person that Oma would ever seek out herself. He wasn't Daniel.

Daniel was dangerously passive. He let himself move with the ebb and flow of things, adapting as needed. He almost never took a firm stance, but when he would stand his ground he would be immovable. Jack had always admired Daniel's ability to adapt. It was quite possibly the only thing that saved him from his tumultuous childhood that led into an equally uncertain adulthood. Had he not decided to stand his ground, had something not activated that stubborn streak in him, Jack was certain Daniel would have been some sort of internationally renowned leader in his field. Whichever of his fields he wanted to be, that is. He was truly a renaissance man. Which made his uncertain expression and momentarily gaping mouth look almost comical for a moment.

"Then, I don't know," Daniel admitted. It wasn't like he could see the future. All he could do would be make an educated guess and there weren't nearly enough variables to take into consideration when dealing with the thought of Jack O'Neill's ascension.

"You don't know." It was more a statement of disbelief than a question, but Jack had a questioning look on his face anyway.

Daniel shook his head. "No. No, ascension doesn't make you all-knowing. I mean, I really… I don't know."

Jack waved a hand. "If I'm catching the next plane of existence outta here, you gotta give me something."

Only Daniel had nothing to give.

"It's your journey," he told Jack, trying to figure out how to get him to understand. It wasn't a one size fits all sort of thing. It was like the human soul had holes in it, unique to each person, and what would fill the holes for one person wouldn't fill them for anyone else. What Daniel had gone through was a completely different experience from what Jack would go through. "No one but you can choose what you become or the path you take. All I can promise you is that it will be an amazing journey."

Jack's scoff proved that he wasn't entirely on board with this mumbo jumbo.

Daniel's next revelation didn't help. "Once you release your burden."

"Daniel, so help me, if you start talking like Oma-" Jack warned.

"I am not talking like Oma Desala!"

"Sounds like Oma to me."

Daniel shook his head. "No no no," he said, raising a hand. "See, Oma Desala would say something like uh, uh," he stammered in thought. "If you know the candle is fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago or something like that."

Jack looked warily at him. "Why?" he questioned.

"To open your mind."

Jack fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Though a candle burns in my house, there's nobody home," he said in what he thought was an appropriately cryptic way to say he wasn't following.

"Okay," Daniel said slowly, standing up and pacing a few small steps through the confined space. Jack watched him warily as he nearly got too close before turning back. "Let's take this one step at a time. There has to be something you want. I can't do this for you."

Jack leaned back and crossed his arms. "One step at a time," he repeated as he looked around. This he could do. One step. It was how he lived his life in combat zones. Checklists. Orders to follow. What did he have, what did he need? Well, he had a completely useless ascended Daniel Jackson. What he needed was a plan. He barely heard Daniel repeat his echoed words of "One step at a time." He shook his head. "Oh there's gotta be another way outta here," he grumbled as he stood up to face Daniel.

"Jack," Daniel started to say, only to be cut off.

"What if you did a little scouting for me? That'd be alright wouldn't it?" Jack asked.

Daniel's mouth straightened as he tried not to frown. "No," he said quietly.

Jack shook his head. "I'm not asking you to knock down walls or anything," he protested, "Just a little recon."

"Ba'al is just gonna torture you again," Daniel pleaded.

"Or uh, uh, a Zat gun," Jack said, brightening. "Help me get my hands on a Zat gun."

Daniel felt Jack closing off. He'd been so close to accepting the path. He should have known Jack would see it as giving up. "The next time is gonna be worse."

Jack wasn't listening. He cut Daniel's words off before they were even fully out. "That's when we move," he decided, looking at Daniel. "The next time they come for me." The plan was already taking root in his mind.

"You can't fight your way out of this!"

"Then help me!" Jack snarled. That flame of anger flared up and he could momentarily hear his pulse in his ears. Would he ever feel his own blood pumping again if he were to Ascend? Would he feel this gut-wrenching fear and itch to claw at the walls anymore if he agreed?

Daniel was unmoved by the flash of anger and underlying fear in Jack's eyes. "No that way!"

They both looked up as the sound of a door down the hall opening echoed and groaned. The hot jolt of anger was overtaken by the cold ice ball in his stomach and the two fought in a way that left Jack queasy.

"They're coming," Daniel noted to the air.

Jack perked up a bit, desperately grasping for any sign of hope. "They can see you, right?" he asked. "We can use that!"

Daniel felt something. A tug. A pull at the back of his mind. He wondered if this was the same sort of sensation that Sam or Teal'c felt around a symbiote. Or, he supposed, maybe even Jack would now, too. "I'll be back," he said distractedly.

"A distraction," Jack pleaded. "That's all I'm asking for."

The Jaffa approached and Jack looked up at the ceiling. It was still disorienting, seeing what looked like Jaffa standing and walking on the wall.

"I promise," Daniel said but when Jack looked back over, he was once again alone.

"Daniel?"

There was no answer except the sound of the device on the outer wall activating. Jack stepped backward, back against the wall. Only after a moment, the wall he leaned back against became the ceiling and the gravity returned to normal, throwing him face-first into the floor with a grunt.

The Jaffa once more grabbed his arms with their meaty paws and pulled him out of the cell and into the hallway. Jack looked back and the cell was empty behind him.

The hope that had flared earlier, along with the anger that fueled it, was suddenly squelched by a sense of overwhelming dread. Jack O'Neill, Colonel in the United States Air Force, leader of SG-1, survivor of war and even torture, was suddenly scared by the thought of facing a Goa'uld. He wanted to struggle, but he was suddenly exhausted by the thought, bitter that he was in the situation at all against his will.

This wasn't going to be fun.


	9. Chapter 9

Samantha Carter was tired.

No, tired wasn't the right word. Every atom of her entire body and mind was a strange mix of anxiety and exhaustion. Her mind spun from scenario to scenario.

Another Tok'ra was undercover and needed assistance. No, even without asking if there had been anyone else on missions there, Sam knew that it wasn't their way to go back to help a fellow spy. It put too much jeopardy on the missions and to the Tok'ra, the missions were everything.

There was something the Tok'ra would need that he didn't have a chance to bring with him. No, that wasn't it either, she thought. Anything that valuable would have been mentioned already. Plus, Thoran wasn't that good of a liar.

It wasn't the first time that Samantha Carter had worked herself to the bone and then some in hopes of retrieving a team member. She'd done no less for other SGC gate teams that needed assistance. No man left behind, as the Colonel always said.

Something niggled at the back of her brain but she couldn't pinpoint it.

Maybe she was just tired.

Along with Teal'c and Jonas, she had spent hours trying to find any hint of what could have taken place. There was only one logical conclusion.

"His motive had to be personal," Jonas said yet again. This time, they questioned him not out of disbelief but in order to help formulate a plan along those lines of thinking.

The entire time, Jonas felt like this had to be the reason. He didn't want to let it go. The other members of SG-1 didn't distrust him or his theories, but that didn't mean they put as much weight into them as they did each other's. Or had put into Daniel's.

For once, though, he was determined to stand his ground. He just knew he was onto something, and it was as much for his sake as the Colonel's that he needed to be right. Even if that meant putting up with Teal'c and Sam poking holes into it.

He supposed they would have done that to Daniel's as well, only Daniel probably knew to expect it and not get defensive. Jonas tried hard not to be defensive. He even felt a little guilty for his first reaction was to take a defensive stance on it.

He fought to clear his head, to clear his emotions, and focus on the problem as if it was a list of things to be crossed off. Get mission info. Check. Scour missions for any potential leads. Check. Figure out if any of these may give a clue to where Kanan might have some sort of personal attachment. Check. Well, working on the check currently. He mentally removed the line through that item on the list in his head. At least they were all tentatively in agreement that the reason was quite possibly a personal one.

"For what reason?" Teal'c asked. This time, however, the questioning lacked the biting undertone as his previous questions and Jonas nearly breathed a sigh of relief that Teal'c seemed to be coming on board with that line of thinking.

"Well, the Tok'ra claim that all of Kanan's spy missions were a complete success," Jonas said. "Therefore, he'd have no reason to go back to any of those planets."

Sam looked up intently from the screen she'd been studying.

"If we take them at their word, we can rule out any logical reason," he continued. As he spoke, he became slightly more animated, talking with his hands. Sam smiled a sad little smile at the thought that Daniel used to do the same thing.

The flood of grief over losing Daniel was wrangled back into the box where she kept it. She refused to feel the same grief over losing the Colonel as well. They had to figure this out.

Jonas' words came faster. "No, Kanan had to be motivated by something… _profound_ enough to not only risk his life but also the life of his host."

Kanan sounded more and more like the symbiote version of Jack O'Neill. Sam hoped they were well matched, even if it was only going to be a temporary situation. At least he had a symbiote to help heal him even after the Ancient Plague was eliminated from his system.

She looked over at Teal'c who gave a slight nod in agreement before going back to look over the data with a new perspective.

"_Don't worry, sir_," she silently thought, "_We'll find you. We'll bring you home. Just hold on_."


	10. Chapter 10

Seven.

This was the seventh time Jack had been revived. At least, it was the seventh time he could remember but they were all starting to blur together and he may have missed one or ten times in that count.

He didn't know how many times this was. He didn't know how long it had been. He didn't know what it felt like to not be in torturous agony. He didn't know anything helpful, not anymore.

He did, however, know that he was starting to very much hate this gravity web containment thing that he was sprawled against. He was back in the torture chamber again, staring at the smug Goa'uld, unable to move more than his head and arms from the elbow down.

This time Ba'al decided to forgo the knives, at least. Instead, he was having fun with the contents of a fancy bottle, dropping it bit by bit into the gravity field where it would splatter against Jack's upper chest. Thankfully it had missed his face so far, but he was in agony already. It was some sort of acid that tore easily through the fabric of his Tok'ra-supplied unfashionable shirt and burrowed itself into his skin.

Jack's vision swam with red and his senses were so overloaded with pain that he didn't know if he felt hot or cold, could no longer pinpoint where the pain stemmed from and didn't even know if the cold down his legs was from nerve damage or if he'd wet himself. The worst part was he didn't even care if he did.

Ba'al watched the last drop fall and admired his handiwork, handling the ornate bottle down with a dark, soft chuckle of amusement.

"The Tal'vak acid will take some time to burn through all the way. Though it cauterizes the flesh as it burns, a very small amount often finds its way into the blood and begins to spread," he monotoned. Jack could barely hear him over the roar of blood in his head protesting his current situation. "Why have you returned here, Tok'ra?"

Every breath Jack took burned as it moved the skin that was burning itself back together again. Fingers of hot agony scratched at his skin and dug deep. "I'm human," he repeated for the thousandth time, voice starting to give out from the pain and the deep deep desire to scream. Screaming, he had learned long ago on a mission in a galaxy not too far away, didn't actually help the mind cope with pain. It was reflexive. He fought it back. It gave him something to concentrate on.

Ba'al let out a soft hum. "Betrayed by your symbiote," he reminded Jack.

"It used me." It was lame, but as far as excuses went, it's all Jack could force his brain to come up with. The words came out in a growl of anger. He wasn't even quite sure if they made it out of his head to be vocalized until Ba'al responded.

"To do what?"

"I don't know and I don't care!" Jack snarled, using anger to help him choke back a sob.

"What did the symbiote call itself?"

If he was able to focus on the question and allowed to delve into the depths of his mind, he may have been able to come up with the answer. He wished he could. It wouldn't matter anymore. With the symbiote dead it wasn't as if he had a cover to protect and Jack could use the break from torture to mentally prepare for the next round. He'd been thrown into it askew, first by the jumble of the symbiote and dying and then by the arrival of Daniel with all the talk about ascending. He needed to get his feet under him again so he could build the walls back up that kept him focused. If only he could pick himself free from this cocoon of agony. He longed for the gentle warm pain-free safety of the sarcophagus.

Jack opened his mouth to speak, but found nothing coming out for a moment. All he could think about was the burning gnawing clawing pain burrowing into his chest. "I don't remember," he finally whispered.

Ba'al was nonplussed. Yet again, Jack was struck with how patient he was for a Goa'uld. Ra and Apophis had been easy to undo once he realized their arrogance was their biggest flaw. Somehow, despite being just as arrogant, Jack felt it was going to be far more difficult to figure out this guy's Achilles heel. "Tok'ra retain the identities of both host and symbiote. You are O'Neill. What was the name of your symbiote?"

"I- I just told you," Jack struggled to get out.

"What Tok'ra secrets could a single name reveal?"

Jack's lips were cracked and dry from breathing in through his mouth to fight back the urge to scream and cry. "I don't know," he repeated, feeling his strength wane. He could, even without the symbiote and with the bad knees, run for miles without pause. He could walk uphill carrying a full pack. He could be freezing to death in the ice or burning alive in the desert and still do what he needed to do, but he couldn't speak more than little bits at a time, all because of a few tiny drops against his chest. So much for Air Force stamina.

"Why protect the one who betrayed you? Abandoned you to… to this," Ba'al said, motioning around the chamber.

"If I knew the name, I'd give you the damn name!" Jack sputtered out angrily. "I don't care about protecting the Tok'ra!" It nearly took everything in him to not scream the words out. They came out choked and uneven. Red started to tint his vision and darkness lapped at the edges, threatening to come in closer. He wasn't sure if he longed for death to give him a momentary break from this or if he hated it because it meant he was that much closer to another round of this.

"Tok'ra have been a nuisance for centuries," Ba'al said as he stopped pacing and turned back toward his captive. He raised the bottle again and started to tilt it toward the energy field.

"Don't," Jack said in a voice dangerously close to a plea. Too close for his comfort. He was just too tired to fight it.

Ba'al moved the bottle, but didn't stop tipping it almost to the point to where more of the acid would fall out. "Even when we thought they had been wiped out, they've become all the more insidious. Like acid, burrowing holes into our empires."

Burrowing holes. Darkness. Flashes. Fire. Rock. The unmistakable sound of tunnels growing from the Tok'ra crystals. The feel of a sudden rush of air pushing out as the tunnels grew.

A woman walking past. A Tok'ra. Speaking. Saying something… Saying…

"Kanan!" Jack blurted out. He shocked himself with how easily the name flowed from his brain to his mouth. Jack was not one to easily give up information, even under agonizing torture. "That's the name." He suddenly felt sick and it had nothing to do with the churning that was already taking place in his stomach. He could barely take comfort in the relief felt when Ba'al lowered the bottle. "Kanan," he repeated weakly.

Even more than the pain, he felt ashamed and he didn't understand why. There was no tactical reason for it. The symbiote, Kanan, was gone. Dead. Tactically, it gave nothing away. But it still felt like shit. No, it felt like betrayal and that is what made Jack feel like shit.

There was a time, fairly recently in the overall scheme of things, where he wouldn't have felt anything. Where the mantra of no man left behind was out of strategic logic and not out of compassion. He wasn't sure if it was the past few years, the influence and loss of Daniel or even the symbiote that wormed its way into him and cut through the walls that years of special ops work and the loss of his son had built and he wished for those intact impenetrable walls now.

Ba'al turned back to the table and exchanged one ornate bottle for another one. With a lurch, Jack realized he was turning back and raising the bottle.

"I- I just told you," he said accusingly.

"Yes," Ba'al said with a smile as he slowly tilted the bottle. "You did."

The moment the gravity field caught the edge of the bottle, it tipped it the rest of the way and a brief stream of liquid poured forth. Jack winced and tried to look away from it, turning his head. He felt the liquid hit and braced for the burn.

The burn never came.

He cracked his eyes open as a sensation of coolness spread across his chest.

"This neutralizes the acid and numbs the pain. So, you see, the truth is rewarded."

Jack exhaled, finding it easier to move his chest. No longer did each breath in and out cause sharp dagger points to skitter across his nerves. He hated that for just the briefest of moments, he was thankful to a goddamn snake of all things, for ending the pain even though he had caused it in the first place.

"I don't know anything else," he said.

"There may be much more of this Kanan still in your memory than even you know," Ba'al said as he reached across his table, thankfully not going for the bottle of acid again. "It'll come to you. In time."

With the push of a button and the same groaning crescendo of his cell, the webbing behind Jack was pulled back and he was sucked backwards into darkness.

He didn't even realize he'd blacked out until he found himself being tossed back into his cell, revived once again. He still buzzed from the sarcophagus.

The breath knocked out of him, he was content to just stay there on his back, eyes closed. But eventually he opened them and found himself staring at up at Samantha Carter. Wait. No. It was the same woman in black as before who sat in front of his cell. Her hair was short like Carter's, but a darker shade, and despite the fact that his vision was flickering from hitting his head on the fall, he could tell even without details that it wasn't his 2IC.

He tried to move his head but it still swam with the impact. He probably had a mild concussion. He'd had worse, especially with the rest of him feeling invigorated and alive thanks to the damn device bringing him back again. He was certain this time he was dead. There was a finality to the darkness he'd just come out of that made him sure of it.

He wasn't sure if he was crushed that it wasn't her and the rest of the team come to save him or if he was glad they weren't seeing him like this. No he definitely wished Carter was there. He didn't even care about the state he was in, he just needed his team. For once, he needed help and wouldn't be too proud to actually ask them for it.

"Is it you?" she asked, peering in at him. Her voice was sweet and familiar despite the accent that he couldn't place.

"What?" Jack asked, confused.

"You shouldn't have come back."

Jack blinked her into focus and a hand raised to his chest. Still intact even where the acid had burned through him like liquid fire. "I- don't remember," he admitted quietly.

She was beautiful.

"If I leave with you, he will know," she said. Jack just kept gazing at her. He knew her. He felt something important about her. Something in him tugged at her. But he had no idea who she was.

"Jack?" Daniel asked as he loomed into view, standing over Jack. "Who are you talking to?"

"The woman," Jack said wistfully. With Daniel hovering over him like he was and the woman sitting at the entrance, she appeared just over his shoulder. It was a strangely comforting vision to have both of them in sight.

Daniel frowned and looked up, but the very motion of his head disturbed the air and the vision of the woman in black dematerialized. "There's nobody there."

Fighting back a sarcastic grin, Jack stayed right where he was. The floor was home now. He was never moving until he was forced to. "Look who's talking."

Daniel walked slowly around Jack, looking down at him as if he was taking in the marks on the clothing and using that to judge what had happened. "Does it still hurt?" he finally asked.

"No," Jack replied after tugging on one of the holes burned into his shirt, and Daniel smiled a little at that. Small mercies. "Told you I'd come back," he said as he looked down at Jack.

"If the Daniel Jackson I knew was really here," Jack started, letting the words trail off.

"I am."

"Then do something," Jack demanded quietly. Daniel didn't respond. He just looked away a little, head dropping against his chest, eyes closed in a gentle squint.

Jack scrambled to his feet. "Now you listen to me," he snapped as he stood, finger pointing at Daniel's chest as if he'd poke it if he could, "I don't wanna go through that again. If you were really my friend and had the power to stop it, you'd stop it!"

Daniel licked his lips. It was such a Daniel-specific thing that Jack fought back a pang of sadness all over again. He was done being sad. If Daniel was going to live in glowy world with Oma, Jack decided that he was going to be furious about it instead of sad.

"The hardest part of being who, or what, I am is having the power to change the things I want to change, and knowing that I can't," Daniel explained, his tone sounding like this was a speech he'd given many times. "Even when I'm certain, even when it's…" He paused, taking a breath. "Even when it's absolutely clear to me, even when it affects the people I care about." Jack rolled his eyes and turned away. "Because for all I can do, I'm no more qualified to play God than the Goa'uld are," Daniel continued as Jack faced the light panel inset into the wall and banged his head gently against it in frustration.

"Ba'al will keep this up," Daniel said after a moment.

"Yes, he will." Jack knew that without saying it. He was screwed.

"So we don't have an unlimited amount of time."

Jack glanced over at his friend. "Gotta be someplace, do ya?"

"No," Daniel quickly supplied. "Look, there must be a reason that Kanan came back here. Was it for the woman? The one you were just talking to?" Daniel glanced up at the entrance to the cell as if he could summon her into materializing for him. "She must have something to do with all of this."

Using a fingertip, Jack traced a line on the glass of the light. "Ya know, screw it. It doesn't matter," he said, resigned. "Carter and Teal'c'll think of something."

Daniel shook his head. "Even if they could figure out where you are-" he said before Jack turned to him, cutting him off. "And you know, Jonas. He's at least as smart as you."

"There isn't always a way out, Jack."

"Hey, if that was true, I'd have been dead a long time ago!" Jack snapped.

"How many more times do you think you can go into that sarcophagus before it starts changing you?" Daniel demanded. "How many times has it been already?"

Jack shrugged. He didn't even make an attempt to keep count anymore. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. He was losing his perspective and he knew it. He just couldn't summon the energy to care. His body may have been revived yet again, but he felt exhausted. It was all blending together. He gave up counting after the third time he'd been taken for the cycle while waiting for Daniel to return.

"It can regenerate your body, make you strong enough to go through that all over again, but all the time it's destroying who you are." He paused a moment and just looked at Jack, willing him to take this seriously, to understand the full depth of what he was saying. "And once that happens, you won't be able to ascend no matter how much you want to."

"Hey, I appreciate what you're trying to do," Jack started.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe you could do it," Daniel insisted.

Jack wasn't in the mood for this argument. "This is me we're talkin' about!" he shouted.

In response, Daniel's voice was quiet and even. "Yes, it is." He watched Jack for a moment. "Now please," he begged, unwilling to let his best friend, the savior of the world time and time again, to just _die_. "Just… try to open your mind."

With a wave of his hand in dismissal, Jack flopped down onto one of the benches. "Oh stop it, will ya?"

Daniel, to nobody's surprise, refused to stop it. "Come on, Jack. You- you think the Asgard named a ship after you because they just thought it was a cool name? Now's not the time to play dumb. You're a lot smarter than that. They saw our potential in you because of who you are and what you've done. Humanity's potential. That's the same thing Oma saw in me."

"I," Jack growled, "am not you." He jabbed a finger in Daniel's direction for emphasis.

"Yeah, well when has that ever stopped you from doing anything?"

Jack was too tired mentally to fight with Daniel. It wasn't even one of their good fights where they'd both feel energized by it. This one was just draining and Jack was drained enough as it was. "Okay, put yourself in my shoes and me in yours," he suggested.

Daniel rocked a bit onto the balls of his feet, hands shoved into his pockets. "You'd be here for me," he said without pause.

"Damn straight!" Jack said, jumping back up again. "I'd have busted you out, blown this rat hole to hell and made damn sure that son-of-a-bitch suffered."

And Daniel would have, too. If he could. "The Others would have stopped you."

"Yeah well they'd have a helluva fight on their hands!" Jack retorted, stopping just short of poking Daniel in the chest for emphasis. He almost forgot Daniel wasn't really there.

"You wouldn't do that," Daniel mumbled, though it did nothing to stem the tide of Jack's ire.

"Ba'al would be dead…"

"...Jack."

"...And don't think I'd stop there!" Jack continued as if Daniel had never tried to interrupt.

"You're a better man than that."

Jack snapped. "That's where you're wrong!" he shouted out angrily. Jack knew the truth of himself. He wasn't a better man. He'd never be a better man. Giving up Kanan's name alone was proof of it, even if his hands weren't permanently stained red with the blood of years of black ops and a son he felt responsible for killing. He even still years later felt the sting of leaving SG-10 stuck being slowly sucked into a black hole. Jack knew one thing and that was that he was nobody's potential and certainly not all of humanity's. He was too weighed down with heavy anchors of regret to ever be free of it.

They stared at each other, each trying to stare the other down. Jack's eyes glowed pale brown with fury and Daniel's remained a crystal blue, lit by the internal glow of an ascended being forcing himself into a human visage.

Daniel broke first. He always did. He could out-stubborn Jack but always chose not to. He turned, taking a few steps away. "Right now, I can't imagine doing or being anything other than what I am," he explained quietly. He turned to look at Jack and saw some of the fury slip off Jack's face as he pulled himself to a more neutral temperament. "I see things," he said in awe. "I understand things in a way I never could have before." It was almost wistful, like he was describing a dream or a fairy tale life. And if it was a fairytale life, Daniel deserved it far more than anyone else and especially deserved it far far more than Jack O'Neill. "I chose this. Even when Jacob was trying to heal me, I chose this. But you in the place you're at right now, you don't have any other choices."

Then he said something that Jack hadn't realized and Daniel hadn't even realized he was talking about. "This isn't your life we're talking about, Jack. This is your soul."

Jack had a soul once. He wasn't even smart enough to sell it, he gave it away for a pair of wings and a gun and a brain full of memories he couldn't live with and he didn't deserve to live without.

He shook his head.

"This is it!" Daniel pleaded. "What I'm offering you is your only way out!"

Jack looked away from the glowing panel of light set into the wall. "You're wrong about that." Daniel's eyes narrowed in question and Jack swallowed hard. "I have another choice."

The finality of those words made Daniel realize exactly what it was that Jack meant. The other choice. He closed his eyes and shook his head in denial. "What are you talking about?" he asked, even though he was afraid he knew the answer already. When he opened his eyes, Jack just looked at him and Daniel could see the weight of the past few years, the darkness he'd carried around with him for so long. It was the same look he'd had when they went on the first mission to Abydos. The one Jack didn't plan to come back from. "No," he said quietly.

"Any moment they're gonna come. Ba'al is gonna kill me again. Daniel, you can make it the last time."

Daniel felt as if his heart was thudding out of his chest at those words. He didn't even need to have a heart anymore to know the feeling. "Don't ask me to do that."

There was something agonizing about watching your best friend plead for his death. Daniel couldn't remember Jack ever pleading with him for anything other than for Daniel to get a move on so they could hightail it back to the gate in time for dinner.

A look passed between them. It seemed hollow at first, as if everything that made their friendship, their bond, heavy and full had sunk to the bottom and all that was left was this shell of a man who couldn't bring himself to be indifferent about being tortured one more time.

"You can put an end to it."

"I won't do it," Daniel said quietly, the words cut off by the groaning grind of the door opening.

Jack moved to the other wall, the one that would become the floor when the gravity field was turned off. At least he'd leave this world without having fallen flat on his face one more time. "I'd do it for you and you know it," he said before laying down. "I don't want to see this cell again, Daniel."

The Jaffa stomped in and grabbed Jack under the arms and dragged him off.

When he looked back, Daniel was gone.


	11. Chapter 11

Carter paced along the side of the lab that SG-1 had holed up in. Nobody came in to bother them. They knew better.

Jonas stretched, his arms and back tight from the hours of nonstop working at the computer in an attempt to make any sense of what the Tok'ra reports may have omitted before being handed over. It was maddening. "I don't know about you two, but I'm beginning to get the feeling that there's absolutely nothing here."

He was about to call for a break when Sam's pacing stopped. Even Teal'c looked up from his monitor to look at Jonas as if there was something important in the fact that her even footfalls ceased.

Though her back was to them, they each knew the expression she probably had on her face. The one that showed she was possibly dissecting the inner workings of the universe in Base 10.

"Wait," she said, though they had already ceased. Her eyes were still unfocused but they seemed to almost brighten in the way they did when she was being brilliant. "Guys," she said as she hurried back to her monitor. "Look at this."

Jonas and Teal'c each came around to her side of the table to look at her monitor where she frantically clicked to the report she wanted.

"What is it?" Jonas asked, rubbing the weariness from his eyes.

"The mission where Kanan worked undercover as a minor Goa'uld in Ba'al's service. How long ago was that?"

Teal'c thought back to it. "Several months. Ba'al has kept the existence of the outpost hidden from the other system lords."

Jonas wasn't following. "The outpost was a secret test facility for weapons technology and gravity field generators. Over a period of several months, he was able to map out the entire facility and catalog its defenses."

"That's what Kanan reported to the Tok'ra Council, but something just struck me," Sam said with a wide grin. "He used Ba'al's Lotar, his personal slave, to access much of that information."

"Yeah," Jonas said, brow furrowed. "The Lotar gave him access to Ba'al's chamber when he was away."

Teal'c asked, "Do you believe Kanan withheld information in his report?" He knew far less about the Tok'ra than he did of the Goa'uld, but he felt they were just as fastidious in their reports, leaving nothing out. For the Tok'ra, the mission was everything and their survival and purpose depended on it.

"No," Carter said with a slight shake of her head. "But think about it. A Lotar is a Goa'uld's most trusted servant."

"Why would he so blithely betray his master?" On the surface, it didn't make sense to Teal'c, however he could see that look in Samantha Carter's eyes and knew she was onto something. To understand, all he had to do was follow her patterns of thought and hope he could remain afloat in the process and not washed underwater in the wake.

"Her master," she corrected with a wide smile. "The slave was a woman."

And there it was. Teal'c understood where she was going. Jonas, however, did not and just gave her a quizzical look.

"Access to Ba'al's own chamber?" Sam prompted.

Teal'c looked down for a moment. He was unsure if he was correct in what he understood her to be getting at. He disliked being unsure. "Are you suggesting that Kanan engaged in an affair with this slave in order to gain access to her master's quarters?"

She knew that Teal'c would find it impossible to believe. He may have turned on Apophis long ago, but he understood the level of loyalty shown by those who fervently believed in their gods, even if he knew them to be false ones. "Well something had to be going on between them! Otherwise, why would she take the risk?" she asked.

"A Tok'ra would go to great lengths to accomplish a mission," he ceded.

Sam tried to stay pragmatic and unemotional. "So, maybe he was just using her, but who knows," she suggested. "I mean the Tok'ra are a very passionate race."

Teal'c weighed it and frowned. "The Tok'ra accept sacrifice as a function of war. I do not believe this slave was a sufficient motive for Kanan to return."

Jonas agreed. However, it wasn't Kanan that had to be motivated. "Sufficient motive for Kanan," he pointed out, emphasizing the name. He looked between his two teammates to see if they saw it as clearly as he did. "The decision to act came after the blending with the mind of Colonel O'Neill."

At that, Sam's face lit up. There it was. The missing piece of the puzzle she'd been assembling. "At which point he would have been confronted with every thought and belief that makes the Colonel who he is and be forced to judge himself by that same code of honor!" She held the puzzle piece in her mind and worked on where to place it.

Jonas nodded. "Especially what General Hammond referred to as the difference between us and the Tok'ra," he suggested. Jonas was exceptionally proud of being a member of the SGC when the General held his ground against Thoran in the briefing room.

It was all so clear. It had been right there staring them in the face. Teal'c realized it and Sam's smile showed she did, too. He went back for her. He went back to save her. She blurted out the thought that was on all their minds.

"We don't leave our people behind."


	12. Chapter 12

Jack's body was fully healed by the last bout in the sarcophagus. His mind, however, was a mess. His thoughts were all over the place and he wasn't sure why. It was disorienting him and he didn't like it.

Maybe he could have mentally held his own for longer if it wasn't for the Ancient plague that nearly killed him, the damn snake they put into his head, the sudden ejection of the snake, the torture, seeing Daniel that he was pretty sure was actually Daniel and not a total delusion, all of it built up until it cracked the wholeness of his sanity. Now, back held against the webbing again as he awaited his torturer, he was pretty sure that sanity was broken.

"Is it you?" she asked, this time right in front of his face. Jack stared at her. Every line of her face seemed achingly familiar even though he had no idea who she was.

"You shouldn't be here," he pointed out.

She remained nonplussed and studied his face for a long moment. "You look so different. How can you be Kanan?"

"I'm not," he said quietly. Jack expected her to look disappointed. Instead, she continued as if he hadn't said anything at all. Was she a memory? A delusion?

"If I leave with you, he will know."

Jack gazed into her eyes. He felt something unsnap inside of him. It wasn't what he would classify as love, but he felt protective of her. Responsible for her. He couldn't lie to her. "He used both of us."

She dissipated and Jack realized that he had spoken not to her but to Ba'al who stood on the platform. "He did use both of us," Ba'al said in agreement. "How long were you host to this Kanan before he convinced you to come here? Days? Or merely hours?"

If he wasn't held so tightly in the gravity field, Jack would have slumped over in exhaustion. He was tired. Tired of being tortured. Tired of this damn webbing digging into his back. Tired of the strange immobilization. Tired of answering questions. Tired of being a damn toy that a Tok'ra thought he could take out for a joy ride just because he fixed the tires. "I don't remember." And it was true. He'd tried thinking on it but came up blank every time.

"What did this Kanan share about his previous mission here?"

Jack shook his head very slightly. "Nothing."

"Why did he return?"

"I don't know," Jack said, almost wishing that he'd get on with the torture and stop the Q&A portion of the evening's entertainment. At least the torture he could focus on, unlike the confusion of blank spots left in his own cracked mind.

Ba'al seemed to agree, drawing himself upward and stopping at the edge of the platform.

"I believe you," Ba'al said. For a moment, Jack wasn't sure he was hearing correctly. "You're a victim of this Tok'ra, just as I am. This Kanan took over his host's body, your body, just as I or any other Goa'uld would have done." Yes. Wait, no.

Jack didn't want it, but he had consented. He remembered that much. He remembered Carter's soft pleading voice dripping with sadness. He remembered a very young and idealistic Daniel chiding him that just because he was in a hurry to die didn't mean the rest of them were. He remembered actually wanting to die, to end it all, after Charlie. He remembered several times when he somehow survived a mission and the others did not, having to learn to live with the weight of it. It was enough to drive you to want to die, but it was different. He wanted this to end but ultimately, he still wanted to be alive. He wanted to be alive and to hopefully make a difference.

Daniel's offer was starting to look like an option. Like the only option.

No, he can't give up. Not quite yet.

He forced his eyes open and tried to focus on Ba'al, tried to get as much intel about him as his movements and choice of words gave away. But his vision swam and his head unfocused. Squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, he tried to focus, to count the number of lines in the webbed backing that held him. He couldn't make it past four before the Goa'uld's voice distracted him.

"He used you to come here. But to what purpose?" Ba'al continued. "I believe the answers are there in your mind. Even if you were a host for a mere matter of hours, something of him will be left behind." He chuckled. It was a soft, quiet, dark sound. "An unfortunate inheritance for you." He turned and stepped back to the platform, pulling open a panel. Even from his position Jack could see the knives, the acid and who knew what else was in there. "Because I will find them," he added as he turned back, knife in hand, "even if I have to dig them out."

Jack swallowed hard, closed his eyes and braced himself for another temporary and painful death and the momentary safety and overwhelming comfort of the sarcophagus.


	13. Chapter 13

"You're telling me that Kanan was compelled to rescue a slave he encountered months ago?" General Hammond asked the major.

Sam could hear the scepticism in his voice, but she sat forward in her seat at the briefing table. "As a direct result of blending with Colonel O'Neill, yes, sir."

Thoran made a sound that showed he thought the whole idea was ridiculous. "Based on the arrogant notion the Colonel would never have left her behind." His voice was as disbelieving as his expression.

Sam wanted to glare daggers across the table at him, but she refrained. "Sir," she said as she turned to the general, "I know from first hand experience how deep the emotions can be shared between a Tok'ra symbiote and its host."

"So do I, Major Carter," Thoran interjected. "Still, your theory? Seems to be based on nothing more than intuition."

"I won't argue with that," Sam ceded. "But it's not without reasoning. I know that's where Colonel O'Neill is."

"As do I," responded Teal'c who had been otherwise silent throughout the meeting.

Jonas chimed in. "We're all in agreement." It didn't take him long or many mission reports to learn that a unified SG-1 was an unstoppable force of nature. They'd swayed politicians and proven themselves against System Lords. Even the Tok'ra couldn't stand against them.

Thoran seemed to agree as he sighed. "It makes no difference. If, indeed, Colonel O'Neill is in Ba'al's hands then he is far beyond our reach."

"We have plans to the outpost," Teal'c contered flatly.

"Then you know it is a fortress! An army could not hope to penetrate it!"

Sam stared at the Tok'ra. "Kanan obviously thought it was possible." She tore her eyes away from him to look at the general. "Sir, if we went in with a small force, maybe two SG teams," she began, only to be cut off by General Hammond.

"I'm sorry, major." Sam's heart plummeted at his words. "I agree with the Councilor. I've gone over the intel that we have on the outpost. A successful attack of any magnitude is beyond our capabilities." His eyes spoke the words his mouth did not. 'Even if we're talking about Colonel O'Neill.'

Sam wanted to stand up and shout, scream some sense into them both, but she remained rooted in place. It took all the military training that had been ingrained in her to not react. She gave a barely there nod of her head and blinked back the warmth that was starting to build behind her eyes, a combination of emotions colliding with her lack of sleep.

Where was the Colonel right then anyway?

She had no idea he was, yet again, in a sarcophagus. She had no idea his life force was being yanked down and stuffed back into his body as it was being knit back together.

She walked back to her on base quarters even as he was being dragged back to his cell, confused and exhausted.

She fell onto the bed even as the gravity shifted in his cell and he was dragged to the floor by it, not even caring about the impact his body made with the wall-turned-floor.

She shifted from one side to the other and then onto her back even as he grunted and pulled himself out of the ball he'd curled into so he could stand up and move.

She stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep, even as he slid down the wall into a seated position and gently banged his head against the wall.

Teal'c, however, had no trouble reaching kel-no-reem.

He was in his quarters, surrounded by many candles, eyes closed as he focused his energy inward. He cleared his mind, swiping everything off the table, and then slowly put back a piece to focus on. O'Neill. He went over the plans in his mind and every strategy he thought of came up unsuccessful. To even have a hope, they would need-

His eyes opened.

He had to see the General. The General would see the value and success of the mission now, Teal'c was certain of it.

There was a time when General George Hammond had been entirely certain of things.

He was certain about his family. He was certain he loved the Air Force and his country. He was certain the sky was blue and the sun set in the west. He was also certain that SG-1 would return unscathed, even when faced with missions that seemed to go wrong. But the point in his timeline of that last certainty had long ago passed and each mission since had put him on edge where he had never been on edge for that particular team before.

It was grating. It also made him want to second guess every decision of his command sometimes.

Not going after Colonel O'Neill was one of those decisions he wanted to second guess but couldn't.

He eyed the paperwork in front of him, setting aside the plans that he'd been studying for so long, and started putting his signature on yet another useless piece of bureaucratic paperwork.

A knock at his office door pulled him from his thoughts. "Come in."

The door opened and Teal'c slid inside. "General Hammond," he greeted gently.

"Teal'c. What is it?" He motioned to a chair even though he knew the Jaffa warrior would likely remain standing in some cultural show of respect.

"I have been meditating on the possibility of rescuing Colonel O'Neill."

Hammond glanced down. He had a feeling that one, possibly all, of the team would come to him with an alternate plan of action. He just couldn't see any of them working, even with the full resources of the SGC behind them.

"I've just been going over the plans to the outpost again myself, Teal'c. I just don't see how we'd have any chance of success against a fortress this well defended, no matter how big the force."

Teal'c nodded slightly. "Agreed. I believe it would take the power of a Goa'uld mothership to do so."

"Unfortunately, we don't have one of those."

"Perhaps not," Teal'c conceded before a ghost of a smile crossed his lips. "But there are many system lords that do."

He watched as the General's expression shifted from a forehead-wrinkling look of confusion to a look of understanding.

General Hammond wasted no time in jamming a finger onto the intercom and asking for SG-1 to meet him in the briefing room immediately.


	14. Chapter 14

Jack was starting to really hate this guy. In fact, hate wasn't even close to being a strong enough word. Despise. Loathe. Detest. Execrate. Ahor. _Akrhh_. There were probably two hundred more words in multiple languages that Daniel knew.

He bit back the sudden urge to laugh at the thought of asking a ghost how you say hate in Ancient. His tongue touched against the inside of his mouth where he tasted a hint of blood, probably from the way he was shoved face-first toward the webbing and it caught him in the mouth before he flopped over so it was against his back. The urge to giggle crept up again as he stared across from him at Ba'al who sat on the bench like it was some glorious throne made just for him. Giggling would require too many muscles, though. He was on a mission to use as few as possible.

"What was its name?" he asked again.

Jack groaned. "Kanan." Hadn't they covered that already?

"There, you remember his name. What was his mission?"

"No mission." Jack was really starting to wish for the warm glow of the sarcophagus right now and he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or bad. Did he want it so he could have the health and stamina to ditch this popsicle stand or did he ache for it because he was becoming addicted? Was this what Daniel had felt, only worse because every time he was in it, there was nothing to heal?

He realized Ba'al was talking again and forced himself to focus on it. "Was it to steal the slave from me?"

"I don't know."

"Did Kanan believe a slave could know my secrets?" Ba'al demanded. "There's something else you're hiding from me. I sense it. I feel it." He bolstered his words by lifting a hand and pointing a knife toward Jack.

"When are you gonna end this?" Jack whispered, not sure if the words were just in his head or if they actually came out. Everything was distant. He didn't care anymore.

"If you tell me what I wish to know, I will end this." Was that Ba'al talking? Jack wasn't talking to him. He was talking to someone else. Why was Ba'al talking?

"Daniel?"

Ba'al frowned. The pathetic former Tok'ra host was already broken. He had hoped it would last longer. "Your mind is beginning to fail. It's time for the sarcophagus."

Despite himself, Jack felt a part of him lurch at that declaration, and it wasn't entirely a bad feeling. "But," Ba'al warned amusedly, "as you regain the strength to return here, consider this… It will be far far worse next time."

Jack didn't care. He'd deal with that later. If he dealt with it at all. Maybe it wasn't too late to make this end. Maybe Daniel might have been right. Maybe he could do this after all.

There was a time long ago when Jack was tempted with giving up. Giving in. Losing hope. Even then he managed to find a tendril of hope to hang onto despite things looking dire. He was having trouble finding that tendril now. The universe was large and the SGC was small. They would have no way of finding him. He was hanging onto the ledge by a mere fingertip and that was starting to slip.

"Daniel?" he whispered, using all his remaining strength to call forth the specter of his friend.


	15. Chapter 15

When Jonas left his homeworld to join the Tau'ri, he wasn't entirely sure he was doing the right thing. He felt ashamed that his government was allowing Daniel Jackson to take the blame for the accident that left him dying of radiation sickness and caused the Tau'ri to withdraw from negotiations. When they left, a part of him left with them. The part of him that did the right thing and felt honorable. All that had remained was a shell of himself and all he wanted to be. All he was was a coward.

Jonas Quinn did not want to be a coward.

He sat in the chair in the control room with the rest of SG-1. They'd holed up there after taking their leave of the briefing room so General Hammond could discuss the plan with the Tok'ra Councilor in private. Teal'c, stoic and silent as ever, like a dome around the team trying to protect them from danger with just his presence as if the team, and even the General, were somehow his children and he was a tree shading them with his branches. Samantha Carter, at ease with the constant war between soldier and scientist, ghosting between two worlds effortlessly in the way only experience brings. Jonas studied each in turn, wondering just how accurate his impressions of them were and just how much history it took to cement them as a team. He felt like the addition onto a house that didn't have the same foundation. He was functional and attached to the team, but would he ever be a true part of the team? He shook his head, yanking the threads of thought that kept him pulled toward that line of thinking. It didn't matter. He _was_ part of the team. He had to focus on the team's current mission.

They had to go after Colonel O'Neill. Jonas couldn't handle another time of not doing the right thing and of taking the cowardly way out when someone else hadn't. He couldn't imagine his new home, his new job, without the man and his willingness to give even Jonas half a chance to prove himself.

As he heard the booted footfalls on the steps, he leapt to his feet alongside Teal'c and Sam. Coincidence made the motion uniform with them.

"Councilor Thoran is threatening to end diplomatic relations," the general announced, the set of his mouth and jaw betraying the effort it took to focus on the needs of the greater good.

Jonas was fairly certain the pit in his stomach at those words was not the only one being felt in the room. Even the on-duty gate technicians in the room stiffened a little at the announcement.

"What did he say?" Sam asked, trying not to look at all guilty.

"Among other things that I won't mention, that this is precisely the reason they've been reluctant to share intelligence."

Teal'c stood next to the general and nodded stoically. "So be it."

Hammond glanced over at the warrior next to him and tried not to smile. "That's more or less what I said," he mentioned before turning back to Sam. "The Tok'ra need us right now, more than we need them. Do we expect any response from Lord Yu?"

Sam shook her head. "No, sir," she said quietly. "We know he received the plans to Ba'al's outpost and the message that went along with it, but we really have no way of knowing if he'll act on it."

"I believe he will." Teal'c said, so earnestly that Hammond turned to stare at him. "Ba'al has kept the existence of this outpost from the other system lords."

The others did not have the first-hand knowledge of the way a Goa'uld system lord would think and act. Teal'c did. He'd been in too many planning sessions in the neverending war. At least he could put that knowledge and insight to good use in a more direct way than he'd been able to previously. He did not miss being First Prime, but he did miss planning and leading battles. He missed the pride of winning. That General Hammond would consult with him was an honor, even if the very tiniest part of him balked at an inexperienced young Tau'ri leading the fight instead of him.

"I still don't understand how destroying the power generators first is going to help the Colonel," Jonas said, still trying to understand the intricacies of the plan.

Teal'c knew O'Neill better than most. He understood him on almost the molecular level. They were, as the Tau'ri saying went, two peas in a pod. Both were sharp edged blades, fully charged energy weapons, just waiting to be unleashed into battle with their loyal troops behind them. "It will give O'Neill a fighting chance. Nothing more." O'Neill needed nothing more.

Teal'c was sure of it.


	16. Chapter 16

Jack opened his eyes into a squint and saw the most beautiful thing ever. A glow lit his vision and he felt himself start to give into it before realizing it was not the sarcophagus but the light in his cell. He was pretty sure he'd have an aversion to overhead lighting for the rest of his days. The light without the warm euphoria of healing caused an itch to start under his skin and suddenly he felt as messed up as ten miles of bad road. He did his best to ignore it. He tried to sit up but couldn't even force the molecules of his body to respond and, screaming one by one, the cells of his body eased back down again and he wasn't sure if he hated the feel of the floor under his back or if he was indescribably thankful that it was impossible to fall off the floor no matter how much his head swam.

"Daniel?" Jack murmured throatily into the empty air of his cell once again once he located his voice and brought it out to play.

This time there was an answer.

"I'm here."

Jack let out a sigh and kept his swimming gaze focused on a spot on the wall near the light instead of the motion he caught in the corner of his eyes. "You were gone."

Daniel knelt down on one knee. He sounded tired. He moved like he carried the weight of the world, no of the entire universe, on his once mortal shoulders.

Did energy beings even have shoulders anymore? The shoulder bone's connected to the - no, that's not right. Jack shook his head slightly as if to try and clear it but instead just felt himself slipping gears from dizzy to that state where your brain is being waterboarded. Thinking in terms of what Daniel actually was anymore was difficult.

Daniel Jackson was, Jack was beginning to realize, as alien as the rest of them. Teal'c with his being a literal alien, Jonas too, Sam being too scientist and too soldier to ever be one or the other, and Jack liked to think of himself as the glue that keeps them all together and seeps into their cracks to keep them from falling apart. Daniel'd been put back together so many times that none of his original parts from the factory were in him anymore. Was that what was happening to Jack, too?

But thinking about factories made him think of Earth and thinking about Daniel in relation to Earth made him realize that of his home planets, Earth was the one that held the most pain. On Abydos he lost his wife and brother because of Earth's constant interfering. On Earth he lost everything else, including himself. No wonder he felt more comfortable with Oma's crew.

Daniel's voice brought him back from the tumble of disjointed thoughts.

Daniel was an anchor.

Daniel was solid in ways that transcended the fact that he was a vision and nothing more.

Daniel was _there _and Jack finally realized what he was trying to do, to be, for him.

"I know," Daniel said softly, his voice a little sad. "I'm sorry, there was something that I had to do. But I'm back now and I promise I'll stay with you until this is over."

Jack tried not to laugh. "It'll never be over," he lamented. The words silently echoed. _Never be over. Never be over… _He was losing his mind and he couldn't even summon the faintest desire to care. MacKenzie would be having a field day tripping through his brain full of landmines and tripwires, trying his best to keep up.

"Yes it will."

Despite the healing of the sarcophagus, Jack felt older than he ever did before. The torture felt like it had taken decades off his life, and he wasn't a spring chicken to start with. He assumed that the only reason he lasted as long as he did was because of those years of experience that now weighed him down like an anchor around his neck.

He was tired. So tired.

"Daniel, you have to end this," he pleaded after a moment. He'd long ago had his pride burned out of him somewhere between a knife in the heart and acid in his veins. He'd always prided himself on being the one to never give up, to never go back to the depths of darkness that made him think a suicide mission involving a nuke wasn't just a good idea, but a necessary one. He may have talked Daniel off a literal ledge before and he may have kept his finger off the trigger in a storeroom, but Daniel was the one constantly saving his life and the realization that even Daniel couldn't be his saving grace this time was a difficult thing to swallow.

"Jack, you just have to hang in there a little while longer."

"No," Jack said, resting his head back against the wall where he sat. "I can't go back in there." He hoped Daniel really was just a delusion, not really there, not seeing him in this state, not responding to Jack to just hear himself talk. "If I go back, I swear to God, I'll give Ba'al what he wants," he choked out. "I'll tell him."

"Tell him what?"

Jack sighed. "That he loved her," he admitted.

"Kanan?" Daniel questioned, even though he knew the answer.

"He came back for her," Jack said quietly. As broken down as his walls all were, he could feel a whisper of remembered emotions pump through him and he suddenly wanted to cry but everything inside was as dry as the desert that Daniel loved so much. Oh Daniel. Jack was suddenly sorry he was the lynchpin that made everything in Daniel's life painful aside from the death of his parents. No, there was more there before Jack was on the scene and he knew it, he just had trouble connecting the dots in his brain, even when it came to Daniel and Daniel's lot in life. He belonged on Earth as much as he belonged with Oma, which was far less than he belonged on Abydos. No, he belonged _to _Abydos. Why did he ever reopen the gate to bring him back? Why did he, no why did _Kanan _, need so strongly to come back?

Jack licked his cracked dry lips a little, suddenly aware of the limitations of his body in addition to the ones of his mind. "He wanted to save her."

He wasn't sure if he knew this all along or if it was a new revelation. It was just part of him and he realized that was his new reality. He'd stopped fighting it and suddenly things became much easier to understand, the emotions and half remembered memories locking into place like a five thousand piece puzzle he forgot buying and dumping out onto the coffee table.

"Ba'al doesn't know this," Daniel stated.

"If he finds out, he'll do to her what he's doing to me," Jack said, still staring straight ahead. "Daniel, if you don't end this, I'll tell him."

Jack couldn't stand the thought of anyone being tortured like he'd been. Especially not someone he had feelings for, even if they were strange echoes of feelings and not true emotions.

He felt outside of himself looking in.

There he goes again, jumbled mind trying to take on responsibility for the universe. There was a time when he was sure it was Daniel's job, not his. With Jack, it was extrinsic. He took on the mantle of being the savior of the world because it was his job and it was expected of him. Daniel, however, was entirely intrinsic about it. He took on the weight of the world because he _liked _it. Maybe it made him feel useful and needed. Maybe it was because he had so little of that in his lifetime. But Daniel wanted to save the world one soul at a time and he seemed to be starting with Jack's. Or maybe he wasn't quite done with Jack's yet. He really started the moment he burst into Jack's life with floppy hair, ill-fitting clothes and cheap glasses. He declared war on behalf of Jack's soul when Daniel scolded him and chided him for taking on a suicide mission. Maybe this was Daniel's way of bookending their lifetime together.

Next to him, Daniel almost smiled. "You won't have to," he said.

Jack let his head give in to the pull of having him close and he shifted his neck muscles enough so he could look closely at Daniel. He knew that look. "There's something you haven't told me. What haven't you told me?"

Daniel looked away and the fleeting shift to his expression gave him away. Jack had been able to read him as easily as Daniel could read the geometric lines and swirls of Ancient. Daniel was fluent in twenty odd something languages, but Jack was fluent in Daniel. He knew the difference of the set of his mouth to mean he was holding back or not being entirely truthful versus the one that meant he didn't know something and it was tearing him up inside to not understand.

"You knew him. This Ba'al. Is it because of your whole glowy thing? Have you been spying on him for Oma or something?"

"No," Daniel said softly.

It took a moment before Jack realized exactly what was going on. Even with his mind splintered and shattering as it was, his ability to read Daniel stemmed from his very bones. There was some level of this being personal. More than just a faceless nameless strike at the Goa'uld, even if he was a System Lord. "You met him at the Summit, didn't you?"

Daniel gave a slight nod. "Yeah. When I realized that it was Ba'al who had you- Jack, I know what he's capable of. More than any of the rest, he doesn't see this as a means to an end. He _enjoys _it."

"So that's why you wanted me to Ascend. You knew he was nuts when this all started."

With a slight wince, Daniel nodded. "Yeah. But don't worry. It's almost over, Jack."

Slowly, Jack turned his head and looked at his friend. "How?"

"You were right," Daniel pointed out. "There's always a way out. Well, at least there's always a chance. Your journey isn't over, Jack. Not yet."

"What'd you do?"

Daniel shrugged a single shoulder and looked down. Jack knew that expression well. It was Daniel trying to be coy in order to hide something. "I didn't do anything. It was, uhm, Sam and Teal'c. And uh, Jonas, too."

Jack fought back the surge of hope that sparked again in his chest. Hope was bad. Hope let you down. But he couldn't resist asking "What?"

Daniel just smiled. "They thought of something."

"What?" Jack repeated but this time he was suddenly energized as he jumped to his feet. It couldn't be true. Daniel had done something he was known for. Despite being a stickler for rules in some ways, Daniel Jackson had always loved bending the rules he didn't agree with. He'd found a loophole somewhere. Before he could even ask anything more, a distant sound of an explosion tore through the cell and the lights flickered off and on again.

Daniel stood to join him. "This is it. All you ever wanted was a fighting chance, Jack. Now you have it. If anyone can make it out of here, you can."

The sound of fighting came closer. A voice shouted that Lord Yu was attacking the outpost.

How had Daniel arranged all of it? Pitting one System Lord against another was playing dirty. Jack didn't mind. But was it Daniel who was behind it?

He didn't have a chance to ask. With another crashing sound that shook the facility, the room started to shift gravitational orientation and he stumbled to the wall that would become the floor.

"Daniel?" he asked, turning to look and finding the cell empty. The lurching of his stomach stopped as he reoriented himself and he felt the adrenaline start to sizzle along his veins, clearing his head.

The lights flickered again and Jack staggered to the new floor and approached the exit. With his hand out slightly, he tested it and found the barrier gone.

He stepped out into the hallway and heard the sound of a Jaffa approaching. Just one by the sound of the steps. Before the Jaffa was even fully around the corner, Jack launched himself at him, racing the few steps so he could tackle him down to the ground and strike him repeatedly in the face with all his built up rage. It had been a long time since Jack had fought in unarmed combat but his constant training paid off. Fueled by his anger and desperation, he beat the guard into submission. He paused to look at his handiwork and for a moment felt sickened by his own brutality, but he didn't have time to waste. He slid the guard's Zat gun out and stood, orienting himself. His body was better than ever even if his mind was still an unsteady blur.

Think Jack, think. He took a deep breath and focused.

He envisioned the plans to the place in his head and figured out the path he needed to follow and ran. Despite the way his thoughts all swam and blurred, he'd memorized the paths that he'd been taken as best he could and he took off in a weary run. He met no resistance on the way to her cell. It matched his. She stood huddled against the wall halfway in.

Her eyes went large as he rounded the corner. "Come with me," he said as he held out his hand toward her.

"No," she cried out, shaking her head. "He'll stop us."

Jack reached for her and grabbed her hand, pulling her along behind him. "Come on."

She barely hesitated as they took off running hand in hand through the hallways. As everyone else ran toward the fight, they ran away.

He was never so happy to see a mothership fill the sky. He was even happier when he realized the shape on the ridge as a Tel'tak.

_We're free, _was his last thought as they staggered toward the ship and darkness overcame him.


	17. Chapter 17

Jack opened his eyes slowly.

He felt disconnected and warm and he was surrounded by lights.

A moment of panic gripped him before he realized what was different.

The smell.

Everything smelled of antiseptic. It burned his nose.

It was the best smell he'd ever remembered smelling before, because it meant he was home. He swallowed back the urge to cry in relief at being back, but also at the thought that he was stuck with these remaining injuries. There would be no warm light to surround him and ease his pain.

Quickly, he shoved that line of thought out of his mind.

He heard Major Carter's voice and focused on it until the words made sense. "Doctor Frasier says he'll probably suffer withdrawal symptoms from so much time in a sarcophagus, but otherwise she expects a full recovery."

"What happened to the woman he went back for?"

Why did Daniel sound so young? When did his voice get the innocence and curiosity back?

Wait, no. It wasn't Daniel. It was Jonas.

Daniel was gone and something lurched inside of him like it was hitting him again for the first time.

He could almost hear the break in Carter's voice, the one that showed she was coming off an adrenaline high and probably no sleep for days and she wasn't sure if she wanted to pass out or stay awake to soak it all in. "Her name's Shallan." It echoed through the synapses of his brain. _Shallan. Shallan. Shallan._ Yes. Her name was Shallan. Is. Jack's head still swam a little. "She decided to stay with the Tok'ra."

Where she belonged. Jack was pleased by the news even if he didn't outwardly show much emotion. His ability to control the expressions on his face seemed to be taking a vacation day.

He could hear Teal'c. "So she may continue Kanan's fight in his name."

Jack felt a surge of pride in her. Was it him feeling it or was it the remains of Kanan? He didn't know. He was too tired to figure it out. "Hey," he called out weakly. "Trying to sleep here."

The rest of his team turned and huddled around him, all smiles. The urge to cry washed over him again. He knew he should be concerned about the state they'd found him in and worry about looking weak in front of them, but he couldn't muster enough strength to give much of a damn about that. He could barely manage the strength to continue feeling the guilt he'd been carrying around after Daniel's death. Even the guilt over Charlie was hard to keep clutching onto, even though he clawed at it with his fingertips to not lose it. Thankfully the longer he was awake the easier it was to fill the cracks in with superglue and duct tape over them and he knew that it was only a matter of time before his foundation of guilt from transgressions both large and small over the years was solid again. Eventually he'd be back to his normal.

"Sorry, sir," Carter said as she beamed down at him. "Glad to see you're okay."

"Listen," he mumbled, dry tongue scraping over dry lips in a failed attempt at moistening them, "Was a good idea you had there."

Sam glanced at Teal'c and Jonas before looking back at him. United we stand. The whole is greater than the individual. Go Team Us. "Actually, sir, we all contributed to it. Do you need anything or…?"

"Water," he croaked out.

She nodded. "Sure," she said, turning to leave, Jonas and Teal'c following with her. It was that unspoken understanding they all had between each other and he knew they were leaving to let him become better reacquainted with the land of the living and not because they didn't want to be there.

He heard Janet's voice faintly, that soft chiding tone saying enough that he didn't need to hear the words to understand her. He was being left to rest and now that SG-1's members were all satisfied he was awake and overall as fine as he could be, they were probably being banished in favor of rest, food and showers.

Jack watched them from the gap in the curtain as they left.

"I always seem to be saying goodbye to you," Daniel said as he stood there next to the bed. Jack lulled his head to the side to look at him.

"Yeah, I noticed that. Why don't you stick around for a while?" Jack asked hopefully.

"I can't, really."

"You just did."

Daniel smirked a little. "Special occasion."

"Christmas?"

"Nooo," Daniel drawled out, arms crossed over his chest, lips twisted into a frown.

Jack tried to stamp down the lurch in his heart at the familiar stance. How was it possible to miss Daniel more when he was standing in front of him? "Groundhog Day?" he suggested jokingly.

Daniel shook his head. "No," he repeated.

"I've got my journey, you've got yours?"

Daniel nodded at that and smiled sadly. "Something like that, yeah." He paused, expression shifting to one a little more serious. "Look, I know you don't think so right now, I mean I know you have your doubts, but uh," Daniel stammered as if he wasn't sure what to say. He had so many words available to him, it was hard to narrow them down. "Because you've been through something that no one should have to go through… I guess what I'm trying to say is, you're gonna be alright."

"How do you know?" Jack asked.

"You're just gonna have to trust me." Daniel smiled again, that same sad smile as before.

"I can do that. You gonna be okay?"

Daniel nodded again. "Yeah, I'm gonna be fine." Somehow, Jack felt he would be. They both would be.

God he hoped this wasn't a delusion.

Jack's eyes veered toward the door as it opened and Carter stepped in. He looked back and Daniel was gone.

"Here you go, sir," Carter said as she carried in a cup of water to set at his bedside.

"Thanks," Jack whispered to her. Her smile, her bone-weary smile of joy and success, overshadowed some of the dark emptiness he'd been feeling. "Goodnight," she said quietly, touching his arm lightly as if to remind herself that he was actually there.

She walked out and Jack suddenly felt very alone, but strangely not lonely.

He looked at the ceiling and whispered, "Thanks." Somehow he knew Daniel heard.

_THE END._

I would like to give everyone who has read this and everyone who has commented on it a very heartfelt **THANK YOU**. I'm very happy my little writing exercises have been so well received. I'm trying to figure out what episode to do next. I'm very open to suggestions! What was your favorite episode and why?


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